WATER WATER

Hoeness is perhaps best known to the German public for his well-documented insistence on the illusory nature of fluids, "the solidity of oxygen" etc. This is a stance which he has consistently maintained since the end of his so-called "strict" period, during which, while still conceding the existence of the liquid and gaseous states, he advanced in public the extraordinary claim that these should be "discouraged" and "punished".
hoeness : self-portrait [cube]
hoeness : selfportrait
For the duration of this phase, while maintaining his customary practice of working in the sink, he would now at intervals turn on the taps, and, in the words of his brother, "thrash about, shouting and flailing around him with a fish-lift". If questioned about this practice, Hoeness would become surly and uncommunicative, stating only that modern society was "too ready to forgive", and that water in particular "would be found to benefit" from "a firm hand". Hoeness was later reluctant to discuss this period of his work, apart from one short Pamphlet-Manifesto in which he upheld it as "an indispensable step in the journey of our culture... [towards] a genuine Rectilinear Alternative."
The end of this period was marked by the interview with Tomas Kreisler for "Schloss" magazine, in which, when questioned about his previous criticisms of air as "pliant" and "unreliable", he replied that he had in fact said "reliable", and went on to defend that gaseous substance at some length, praising it for its "unyieldingness", and "crystalline matrix". He had always, he claimed, been located in the German Romantic tradition, "through [his] love of nature". Appearing at one point to become angered by Kreisler's obvious confusion, Hoeness stated that he (Kreisler) "lacked the poetic sensibility", and asked passionately if his heart had never been "activated by the build-quality of a summer breeze."