Armin Dietrich

My paintings are colour poems about life in the city — about surfaces that remember. Cities are like vinyl records — their stories scratch themselves into the walls: layer upon layer, intervention upon intervention, forgetting upon forgetting. Some subtly, others in brutal ways. Weathered facades, overwritten walls, traces without context — this is the material from which my work emerges.

I prepare the canvas like an urban surface. Over several days I build it its own history: layers, wounds, scratches, patina. Then comes the spray gun — I spray with oil paint, not aerosol. I usually begin with drawing, often with my eyes closed. Personal memories mix with chance images and art-historical references. My formal language comes from Arshile Gorky and the CoBrA painters, particularly Karel Appel. Then I paint — mostly with my hands. That is the most direct access for me. Texture that works against the smoothness of digital images.

My process is not linear. Paintings develop over months. I deliberately leave room for the unpredictable — spontaneous gestures, so-called mistakes, become part of the work. The painting decides with me. I paint until it stops asking questions. Then it is finished.

The city gives me my palette: concrete grey, ochre, rust brown, urban patina. Even when my paintings look vivid — every tone carries concrete grey within it. In the studio, mixed colours accumulate — forgotten remnants that become new tones. Old mixtures resurface months later in other paintings.

The works oscillate between abstraction and what surfaces beneath it — contours that refuse to disappear entirely. They require time, unfold slowly, demand repeated looking. Those who linger in my paintings may find their own stories — the city they know, the encounters they've had, the surfaces they touch every day. I see them as chronicles of our time in colour — poems about life in the city. Surface as memory — not nostalgic, but as witness.