Fire Beats is Markus Draper’s own selection of key works since 2003: paintings, collages, installations, and video pieces that revolve around the subjects of dwellings and threatened idylls. “I understand houses as a stand-in for the human image,” explains Draper. The wall becomes a sensitive skin, and “the skin is the projection screen on which internal conditions become visible from the outside.” Ulrich Bischoff describes this multi-layered interplay thus: “Draper’s pictorial inventions are always overlays behind which ‘reality’ appears like a fireworks display, only to remain concealed.” This book is published on the occasion of awarding the 2006 Energy Art Prize to Markus Draper.