A flower bouquet is a collection of flowers in a creative arrangement. The bouquet garni (French for “garnished bouquet”; pronounced [bukɛ ɡaʁni]) is a bundle of herbs usually tied together with string and mainly used to prepare soup, stock, casseroles and various stews. Flower bouquets became a frequently depicted motive in the still life paintings of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573 – 1621). Eckhard Kremers’ bouquets are formed of paper streaks with various stabilizing materials. The hardened paper form is then used to prepare a mold from which the bouquet is cast in bronze or aluminium.
Clothes and costumes feature prominent in the works of Eckhard Kremers that often play and struggle with the aesthetic appeal, emotional potency, and socio-erotic functions of clothing. Coats, jackets, and uniforms are worn by masters, servants, soldiers and fathers – the authoritarian masochistic archetypes of patriarchic rule. Men in official dress or formal attire are frightening and rediculous at the same time. Eckhard Kremers paints male outfits bereft of their human bodies and hung up on a rack in intense and vivid colours. He liberates them from the threatening masculinities that once were woven into their fabric and simultaneously gives them a new aesthetic quality.
„Die Kritik der Religion ist die Voraussetzung aller Kritik [the critique of religion is the prerequisite for all critique].“ ― Marx, K. (1844): „Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie“. In Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher.
Taking a look behind the crucifix, Giotto di Bondone revealed its artisan construction. The mystery of believe is that the gods were made by humans.
“Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic progressive neurodegenerative disorder […]. Memory loss is a presenting symptom in most people who develop Alzheimer’s disease.” ― Burns, A. & Iliffe, S. (2009): “Alzheimer’s disease”. BMJ 338: b15.
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” ― Luke 14:26.
Catholicism teaches that you cannot experience the love and goodnees of your god unless you truely and fully hate yourself for not being as good and loving as your god is. The concept of purgatory is the perfect expression of this sacred practice of self loathing.
“Catherine, however, did not see purgatory as a scene in the bowels of the earth: for her it is not an exterior but rather an interior fire. This is purgatory: an inner fire. The Saint speaks of the Soul’s journey of purification on the way to full communion with God, starting from her own experience of profound sorrow for the sins committed, in comparison with God’s infinite love. We heard of the moment of conversion when Catherine suddenly became aware of God’s goodness, of the infinite distance of her own life from this goodness and of a burning fire within her. And this is the fire that purifies, the interior fire of purgatory. […] We too feel how distant we are, how full we are of so many things that we cannot see God. The soul is aware of the immense love and perfect justice of God and consequently suffers for having failed to respond in a correct and perfect way to this love; and love for God itself becomes a flame, love itself cleanses it from the residue of sin.” ― Benedict XVI (2011).
Eckhard Kremers 