The objects used in Fritz Bornstück's still lifes gain new life as the artist reuses and recycles the debris of popular culture in a practice he describes as cultural recycling. Bornstück (b. 1982) is a scavenger, pulling materials from wide and varied sources – such as film noir, found footage, his immediate surrounding or even private trash – and puts the contents of his ongoing collection in formal discussions to produce dynamic aesthetic friction. The used materials communicate the artist's creative context in translation, appropriating their sources and reinterpreting them to produce an associative space for the viewer. Traces remain as the landscapes and places, which are depicted, are abandoned. Silence, Light, Reflections, stories and history are calling to be unraveled. The objects star in these scenes, like a grotesque cabaret; they are animated in the way they lie, stand, lean, bend towards each other and their surroundings. The instability of the environments created and the seemingly careless nature of the compositions that hold these painted worlds together, tell something beyond the bare depiction. But what, is not definite. Instead the works are somewhat ambiguous. They may call for a compassionate gaze, trigger the viewer's humour, or simply tap in to the perverse joy of voyeurism. Even though they are built from banal everyday items, Fritz Bornstück's still lifes hold secrets: big ones, little ones, weird ones. Their manifestations are riddles that feed the imagination of the viewer while refusing to give away any answers. Instead the narrative is left open to interpretation.