Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.

When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.

I am interested in reconstructing symbols. It's about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven.

But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.

Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose.