The world seize,
to comprehend it.

Who RIFFI approaches,
finds a person almost without a personal history.
To be a person means to him, not let be to commit
- also not to his biography.
So he appears for our conversation straight out from heaven;
pure presence.
He is nothing else than what he is in the moment.
Confusing contradiction and perhaps just therefore,
however, always genuine RIFFI.
Like his plastics.
Wooden - stony - bonesly - metallic natures,which refer neither to one -
truth - still these quite look for to prove it.
They are simply there - like their creator.

Still RIFFI with his art seizes the world in details,to comprehend it.
That is only apparently a contradiction,
because with his work he doesn´t seek for sense.
He has no concept, no message, no will for mission.

question one:
What is the world made of?
Like a marvelling child he let himself
fascinate by the morbid aura of a faded bone,
the soft roundness of a threadbare piece of wood,
by the kaleidoscope of colors of rusty metal.
It is the no more virgin,
the material is already touched and transformed by the world,
which excites the artist.
Logically, that all his sculptures
and also his earrings and necklesses
only and alone made from - objets trouves -.
From findings of the scrap yard,
the flea market or from walks in his surrounding.
He sticks them together, - screws or glues.
From - trash - also is made the special glue,
which the complicated combinations are containing also bones,
wood, horn ore metall:
dust of the pieces, emerged in the process, mixed with glue.

So the works are emerging glue for RIFFIs typical transicion ,
that the addition of heterogeneous materials nevertheless look like one piece.

-Question two -
How does the world run?
A possible answer; mechanically.
Many from RIFFIs objects are moved, somehow.
Maybe funcionally like a lamp,
or possibly metaphorical
as an expression of flexibility of the world,
or simply as toys as RIFFI calls them.
Many of his sculptures have movable parts.
For example the bony hand swinging at a neckless,
or a shutting lower jaw of a sheep,
which is died long time ago.

Follows question three -
How many dimensions has got the world?
RIFFI found four.
Up until now.
Two were not enough to him.
He has given up the painting after a year.
Also, because he likes to work straight on, catching his moods,
and them can change quickly.
He can and does not want to wait until the paintings has dried.
His plastics are not only three-dimensional,
they open themselves through the movement to the fourth dimension.

RIFFI is a fiddler, a crafter.
So the people say often to him,
while they observe him drilling thread or pondering about
how to stick things or he contrives rarly screws.
He is not an abstract artist as he emphasizes again and again.
The figurative,
- the human person- remains in the center of his creation.

Emerges question four...
What is the human person and what is the artist in the world?
One of RIFFIs answers:
The human person tries to seize the world from beginning until the end.
The artist creates the world and in the same time he is criticizing it.

Thereupon when someone wants to deal with RIFFIs work,
is needed to find the answer in themself.

He, who produces rather than reflects, is unwillingly to interpret.
As well as, his own contradiction gives him a constant internal pressure,
perceiving to continue,
without thinking about it, why he does?



Written by Anja Stahler (Neustadt Journal)
translated by Nicola Bohle...