With a practice centered around improvisation, Leipzig, Germany-based artist Janosch Dannemann embraces “mistakes” as a critical part of his process. “Getting to a finished piece is a constant back and forth between making an artistic choice, and then observing the emerging drawing failing to live up to the vague notion that the decision was based on – only to repeat the process in order to keep moving forward,” he explains. He treats these inaccuracies, which inevitably arise along the way, as the blocks upon which his finished work is built.

Forgoing formal plans, Dannemann begins each drawing with an abstract background, allowing the motifs to unfold slowly and somewhat unpredictably. “The driving force that dictates the shapes and colors of the whole process and its final missing pieces is a simple yet seemingly endless effort to let humor seep into the invention of a picture,” he says. “A humor that invites bold colors, naive shapes, and mundane storytelling in order to forever teeter on the edge of becoming a joke but never really doing so.”

See more from Janosch Dannemann below!