On February 7, Ursula and I drove to Frankfurt in a friend's VW bus. In the cargo area were 31 paintings from our fine art project THE POWER OF THE ELEMENTS . We've already reported on the planning phase and the delivery of the paintings in our blog . Meanwhile, the office space is fully furnished, and I had the great honor of creating paintings of the paintings, so to speak...

Upon entering the space in the Omniturm, you're immediately struck by the harmonious design concept of architect Sabina Blaeser and interior designer Nazanin Malek. It's a kind of hybrid between a workplace and a home. Cozy lounges alternate with offices.

The sensitivity with which Nazanin Malek selected her images is also fascinating. Everything seems harmonious. For me, there are five themes I'd like to highlight:

Picture in the team area

Everyone agreed: This picture is tailor-made for this location. It captures the colors of the space so perfectly that one might think the image was planned based on the space. Or vice versa. But the fact is that the photo was taken in 2020 on an icy winter day in Iceland, as I walked from the famous airplane wreck back to the parking lot. With the wind howling, I captured the monolith with the lighting oscillating from warm orange to cool blue.

Picture in one of the lounges

For this blue-painted wall, Nazanin chose one of my favorite motifs. The spray from Dettifoss covers the basalt wall. The whole thing looks more like an abstract painting than a photograph. Interesting detail: To my left, dozens of tourists were standing there, photographing the waterfall. But no one seemed to notice the almost mystical stone wall with the spray...

The «Rust picture»

During our trip to Iceland in 2014, we created several so-called "photo originals" – unique images. We achieved this by bringing ten 125 x 125 cm steel plates back to Iceland and allowing them to corrode on site, exposing them to salt water, wind, and weather. We then mounted images from Iceland onto these steel plates, spaced a few centimeters apart, so that the photos appear to be floating on the steel plate. One of these photo originals now adorns a seating area in the Omnitower.

Diptychons

In contrast to the offices and lounges, where the pictures are presented in black oak frames with shadow gaps, all the pictures in the corridors are black and white and frameless in light oak frames. This creates a new presentation level, which I find very exciting. From the abundance of motifs in the corridors, I chose two photos: One shows a silvery river flowing into the sea on black lava sand. This photo was taken on Iceland's south coast, near Jökulsarlon. The second was taken on the northeast coast of the Pacific Ocean. It shows a group of humpback whales feeding on bubble nets.

Employee offices

Each employee was allowed to choose a picture for their workstation. These pictures were then placed on the sideboards instead of hanging them. I've never seen this before, but I think it looks very harmonious: