How Philipp Alexander Schäfer is transforming Frankfurt

Git’s just circuit boards. Circuit boards, the heart of a computer, fascinate him, without which there would be no digitization and therefore a rapidly changing world. Philipp Alexander Schäfer has been painting circuit boards for four to five years now, because in his eyes there is hardly any other object that characterizes this world as much as it does. They are often only two years old, but companies throw them away when they are already obsolete. “That’s awesome,” he says. Circuit board pictures hang on the walls in his studio, and outside in the garden there is a large cube composed of painted circuit boards. You can set it up on “Spitz” so that you can rotate it. Then he is a square circuit board spinning top.

His studio is not a studio in the classic sense, a backyard, a disused workshop or something like that, but an oversized garden shed or a small, unusual house with a stove. It is located in the Griesheim district of Frankfurt and is an idyll, even if the view ends at the noise barrier of the motorway. What could you spray or paint on this wall? Above her there is only the sky and the traffic noise is not bad at all.

Twelve years ago, Philipp Schäfer found and renovated his idyll, which was then inhabited by cats, replaced all the windows, enriched the kitchen with a free-standing, cast-iron bathtub, because this is the only place where there is a water connection. It stands like a painting in her kitchen corner. And he tamed the garden. At least a part of it, and in such a way that he left his lush naturalness. The daffodils grow wild, but there is also a vegetable patch. For three years he didn’t know that there was a garage on the other part. The blackberries had grown so high and dense. They didn’t even know that there was a sky-blue Mercedes from 1979 in this garage. They cut a path and pulled him out. It was the previous owner’s “grandpa’s Sunday car”. The sky-blue Mercedes is still driving.

Schäfer lived here for two years. He says: “After the winter you know what you’ve achieved.” Keyword: heating. But then came love and children. For them, the garden must be paradise. So her father now only makes art in Griesheim. Never heard of Philipp Alexander Schäfer? Actually, everyone who has walked through Frankfurt with open eyes in recent years should know something about him. They just didn’t know for a long time that it was from him. For example, these little fantasy creatures made out of a few lines on the distribution boxes. Or the skilfully transformed manhole covers.

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