Explosive mixture
H.O.M.E Mag Januar 2021 - Text: Gabi Czöppan Fotos: Michael Kammeter
He is only 24 and already a brand: Alexander Höller intoxicates with multi-layered images in which nerve tracts, plant roots and, again and again, the forest as a superorganism appear. A visit to his studio in Munich
Mr. Höller, why do you call yourself “The Emotion Artist”? I was 19, sitting at dinner with my parents and younger brother, and everyone was talking about their day. I just had
sold two paintings to a businessman from Cologne. And he had told me his motives for the purchase: One picture had a calming effect on him, the other, in a striking magenta, gave him energy. That’s when I suddenly knew: Hey, that’s what I am, The Emotion Artist. On the one hand very loud and flashy, on the other hand quiet and emotional. Two years ago, I had the words tattooed on my forehead in my own handwriting.
A tattoo on the face is a permanent change. Didn’t that scare you? Of course, I know that I don’t fit into a bourgeois life with that, and I don’t want to. When I look in the mirror in the morning, I see what I am and what gives me drive. And I know: You have made yourself a work of art. Every tattoo on my body has its meaning, some I drew myself. For example, above my chest it says “Art is my Passion”.
And on your fingers you read “LIVE, LIFE”. Is tattooing also part of your art? I recently tattooed my tattoo artist for the first time. It’s like drawing in the air. You need a very steady hand. That’s not my medium at all. I prefer to produce art explosively and on a grand scale, in oil on canvas.
Let’s stay with the outward appearance again: Fashion is obviously also part of your self-stylization. What are you wearing today? A T-shirt of the Swedish metal band Preach. I listen to a lot of punk and I think these band t-shirts are just cool. That’s how I feel comfortable.
Is that part of your work? Of the total work of art Alexander Höller. Fashion is very important to me. My mother studied fashion, so I guess I developed a soft spot for it early on.
When did you start painting? I sprayed graffiti when I was 13, 14 and thus found access to color and art. I then started painting in my parents’ garden, which all developed quickly. I organized my first own exhibition at the age of 16 in my hometown Schweinfurt, where I sold my first paintings for 50 to 250 Euros. Meanwhile, galleries are approaching me to exhibit.
A medium-sized picture of you now costs around 40,000 euros. Her father is the well-known mental coach Jürgen Höller. Did he promote you? He never pressured me. On the contrary. It was always me who pestered him and asked for tips. After all, he has 35 years of professional experience and could explain to me how business works. It wasn’t easy for him, however, when I told him at 17, shortly before graduating from high school, that I wanted to drop out of school to become an artist.
ARCHAEOLOGIST
At each of his paintings
Alexander Höller works for months. Some consist of up to twenty layers. He rubbed the gold leaf of his new series “Eternity” onto the picture with his hand
Did you have to assert yourself? In the end, he agreed. He realized: He tells people on stage to live their dreams, and his own son stops it.
You played good soccer as a youth. Has the training helped you with your art? I have learned discipline. I was a goalkeeper for 1. FC Schweinfurt 05, but my career ultimately failed because of my height. I am 1.76 meters tall. I had training four times a week, games on Saturday and was back on the pitch Sunday morning. I do the same with my painting today. I go to the studio every day, and if I just sit there and think for two hours about what to do next.
When did you start calling yourself an artist? I moved out at 17 and attended a drawing school in Munich for a year. I wanted to learn how to see properly, and nude drawing was also on the schedule. When I was finally 18, I was able to apply to an art academy. Without a university entrance qualification, you have to take a gifted student exam. It worked right away in Nuremberg. When my professor Thomas Hartmann retired, I decided to change. I wanted to go to Berlin or Munich. I had already been accepted by the University of the Arts in Berlin, but then decided to take Gregor Hildebrandt’s class in Munich. Berlin is a mega city, but there are too many distractions there. I need my peace and quiet to paint. In Munich, when I feel like it, I can also go to the mountains and be in nature.
Where do you get your inspiration? Mainly in the forest. I grew up on the edge of the forest and spent whole afternoons playing there. At 14, 15, the forest became my refuge, I realized how important trees are for us. I am fascinated by the fact that trees communicate with each other through their roots. We humans place ourselves above nature, but we cannot live without it.
Do you paint outdoors? I feel the forest as a place of longing. I get up early at six and look for the morning light. In my backpack I have drawing pad and cell phone, I draw and take pictures, for example tree tops. I transfer the strokes from the small to the large on the canvas and layer them on top of each other. From this my pictures are created. The stroke, the gesture is decisive.
Do you listen to music in the studio? Depends on what I’m working on. When I splash the paint expressively on the floor and that requires physical effort, I like to listen to music loudly, through headphones. Right now I’m listening to Machine Gun Kelly, sometimes Jimi Hendrix is on, depending on how many layers I put on.
How many layers do your images consist of? From up to twenty. This takes months. And when I’m working on difficult, fine layers, it has to be absolutely silent. In my new paintings, I worked gold leaf in with my hands, which almost had something meditative about it. It took me hours to rub that in over the picture surfaces.
How long do you work on a painting? In the meantime, I’m getting faster; I had to learn the technique first. There are pictures that I only sit on for five or six months, that’s the minimum. Others I put away for two years before I bring them out again. I then torch or sand a layer on top of that and start over. There’s something archaeological about digging up a picture again and scratching out the lower layers on it, bringing out the past, so to speak.
Do you paint only abstract or also sometimes figurative? I find pictures boring whose core is immediately recognizable. One of my main themes is the forest, which appears hidden in many pictures. I don’t paint the forest, I want to reproduce the mood, the lights, the ramifications. Self-portraits are also in it.
Do you have role models? I have always felt close to the American abstract expressionists, Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko. They painted what and how they wanted, no matter how they were talked about. Big and loud. This was later taken up by Georg Baselitz and Anselm Kiefer. Those two are my heros, too.
Some pictures are called “Neurons”, they are about how life came into being. Is this an issue? Yes, that is a theme, art as a medium to explain the world. “Big Bang” will probably be the name of my next exhibition.
Her paintings also hang with celebrities. Do you care who buys your images? No. Of course I’m happy when Oliver Kahn, who was my childhood idol, has pictures of me, or Arnold Schwarzenegger. This is an honor.
One as big as exhibiting at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)? My big goal is to have a solo exhibition at MoMA in New York one day during my lifetime. This has been my dream since I visited the museum when I was 17. This way there, every day one step further, sometimes two steps back, inspires me. It’s fun to be able to get up every day and do what I decided to do when I was 17: paint pictures in the studio. I am grateful and proud to have achieved this at a young age. A life without art is no longer imaginable for me. My art is the last thought before I go to sleep and the first thought when I get up. My images are me, I am my images, and through them I can speak.