TWS –Could you share something with our readers that you’d like them to know about you?
DB –I don’t like interviews 😉
TWS –We’ve got your latest book, Visual Tourette, and are interested in learning more about it. Can you begin by discussing the book’s title. Why Visual Tourette?
DB –It’s all about expressing feelings, emotions and impressions as unfiltered and spontaneous as possible. Society, education and self-optimization is giving us a permanent distorted way of dealing with our desires, fears and repressed shadow aspects. I would like to express and integrate them as directly and untamed as possible in their creative wildness through my unfiltered thumbprint. Bombing rays of light from a birthgiving inside-universe into an outside-material-world and vice versa is kind of visual tourette as a human expression in it’s purest possibility.
TWS –Given the extensive body of work published on Visual Tourette, what was the curatorial approach taken in creating this new book?
DB –Visual Tourette is a kind of hedonistic perpetual-motion-time-travel-machine and is generated like an organic life form through the process of mixing future pasts, current presence and long past ancient aspects of parallel existing future possibilities.
TWS –How do you believe your work has evolved since your previous published book, Include Me Out? Which elements have remained the same, and what new concepts have you incorporated into your artistic language?
DB –It kind of goes in all directions at once. The intensity of permanent awareness inherent in most of my works and the spontaneous will to express this is still a driving force to describe my artistic output. I grow different aspects of my perception with different techniques like backwards skydiving into an endless rainbow bonsai tree. It’s a bit like a secret language that unfortunately only reveals a certain part of its deeper meaning to me in my everyday ordinariness. That means that I mostly don’t understand what I‘m doing, ha ha. I have to open channels and let come uncompromisingly what wants to come. That’s what remains the same and what is changing all the time.
TWS –This book features many images that are not permissible on Instagram due to its censorship policies. To what extent do you believe that artists adapt their work to fit within the confines of what is acceptable to share on social media?
DB –Social media is a mirror of our own self-control. We create a world within a world as we please, but with bizzare compromises. Sexuality and nudity are natural expressions of creative power and should be allowed to be expressed visually in imagery in a playful and ubiquitous manner. The more forbidden the imagery of nudity and sexuality seems to be, the more important it is for the artist to remind people where our wonderful journey started and to remind us of the power inherent in sexuality as an ultimate creative power.
TWS –Your collages combine contrasting forces that create the conceptual tension that makes your collages so powerful. They are playful and humorous, yet they also convey a sense of rawness and criticism. Could you elaborate on the ideas that you seek to express through your work?
DB –It is not easy to answer this question, especially since I am often not even aware of where the border between the opposing poles runs, which I often do not even recognize as such. There is a creative power of suggestion that acts as the heart in this image- forming system and makes me the co-creator of my own world and at the same time allows me to reflect on it constantly and, like a kaleidosop is going mad, creates new patterns and lifeforms which i have to reflect and reform again and again.
TWS –There’s something of the contemporary language of memes that inhabits your work: harsh messages told with humor and careless cruelty. How do you relate to this notion?
DB –I’m a child of my time, ha ha. Sometimes you have to feed the hand that bites you.
TWS –Your collages integrate a diverse range of materials and techniques, including paint, post-it notes, and felt markers. Could you discuss your experimentation with materials and how this has become a fundamental part of your artistic DNA?
DB –It’s all about creative freedom and how I like to express it in a pure and sometimes raw and primitive way. I have a few different techniques, favorite materials, and approaches to how I’m going to peel the magic apple. It always depends on the source material which technique I choose for every single special moment. I like it most when I can trust my intuition unconditionally. I love to let myself fall into the respective image like a deep sea diver into the open sky.
TWS –In the age of social media and digital content, what motivates you to continue publishing books?
DB –I love books and everything I can touch with my hands. I love all the worlds I can create with my eyes and all the fantastic things I can do with my human body. It’s a great feeling to transform a beautiful dream into manifest matter. That’s why I’m publishing this book right now.
TWS –Finally, is there any final thought that you’d like to share with the TWS audience?
DB – Love Conquers All / Make Some Noise ~*~
Learn more about Dennis’ work and new book via his Instagram profile and DM him to get one of the limited copies he has printed. This book is a must have!
