"I was interested in the idea of freedom as an illusion and the fact that these wild movements were limited by an outside force. I don’t want expression. I like to play around with the gesture. It’s like objectifying the idea of expression."

 

-Interview with Sara Fumagalli, 2018  

 

 

"I intended to have that surface prison. You take a canvas and it has precise dimensions. That’s a given, the next question is this gesture. They are all involved with human proportions, how far an arm can reach and you confront that surface. I wanted to say it as simply as possible, to deal with that surface, that dimension, that gesture which ends on that given surface. I didn’t want to make a line and then have it continue in space, so I put a wood strip around it to be quite sure that all my gestures ended within that. You have the freedom, like the freedom of a prison. You move it back and forward and crash against the wall, which is the point. I think it’s clear that there’s a lot of energy in the strokes, and that it’s impossible to stop right at the end each time. So I need the help of that wall. […] I said, OK, I’m making paintings, the paintings can be as big as the world. That’s my thinking, that’s the size of the painting, and that’s the limit of the world."

 

-Interview with Wolfgang Becker, 1971