In 1925, Werner Heisenberg spent two weeks on Heligoland to cure his hay fever. „Sitting on my balcony, I often had the opportunity to think of Bohr’s remark that when you look out over the sea you feel like you are grasping a part of infinity,“ he wrote in „Quantum Theory and Philosophy.“ I kept thinking about this sentence when I was working on this picture.
During this time, Heisenberg laid the foundation for the uncertainty principle of quantum theory, for which he received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1932. His breakthrough was to work exclusively with relationships between observable quantities and to leave out anything that consisted of unmeasurable assumptions. And what does that have to do with art?
I’ve always found it much more exciting to ask people „What do you see in the picture?“ than to answer the question „What did you paint? / What is that supposed to represent?“. In concrete terms, this means: the image only emerges through observation – exactly at that moment, exactly by the person. And beyond? Is there no picture at all? Or is it simply not accessible to anyone because it can be anything that can be seen in it but is not fixed? Interesting thought experiments as I put paint on a canvas and observe over and over again.
Luckily for me, the request for a picture in blue, gray and white came at the time when I was reading Heisenberg’s thoughts on Helgoland: the view of the sea that makes you feel like you’re grasping a part of infinity.
