Artist Statement 

I am a Munich-based artist and social scientist (PhD). My practice spans painting, objects, photography, installations, and interventions, and grows out of both artistic intuition and empirical research. I don’t see these as separate fields, but as ways of looking at the same world from different angles.

My work deals with social structures, norms, roles, values, and human desire. I’m interested in how these systems shape us — and how they can be made visible, questioned, or slightly disturbed through artistic work. I’m not trying to resolve contradictions, but to hold them open.

At the center is not the medium, but the space a work creates: a space for doubt, friction, irony, emotional response, and slow thinking. I often work with fragments, breaks, and unfinished forms — not as style, but because that feels closer to how things actually are.

My background in empirical social research is part of this. I worked for many years on childhood, youth, participation, and values like autonomy. That way of observing and analyzing still runs through my artistic practice, even if the language has changed.

Painting is for me a kind of existential field. It’s about seeing cracks without fixing them. Not smoothing things out, not idealizing social or human structures, but letting them exist in their complexity. Imperfection is not a problem to solve, but something to work with.

The name GWEN — and “Gwen the Man” — is also part of this questioning. It plays with authorship and identity, with how names shape perception. It’s not a fixed persona, but a shifting position that refuses clear categories.

In the end, I don’t aim for final answers. My work opens spaces where things can stay unresolved, where different readings can exist at the same time.