The work of this Czech-born German artist is not constrained to one single style. On the contrary, he employs a rich and multifaceted language, playing with different media and materials to build an expressive world of images. His use of a plethora of different techniques pays testament to his artistic dexterity and a relenting interest to uphold a narrative drive.
 
Around 1989 Dokoupil began to expand the range of his original creations by projecting images on the canvas using the soot produced by a burning candle. Girasoles verticales belongs to this new body of work, in which the artist treats the surface of the canvas with this unusual finish which causes a distortion on the contours and proffers the beholder with an array of different interpretations.
 
The work seems to emulate a photographic negative in which the sunflowers absorb all the light, as if they were fogged, turning the focus onto the simplicity of the composition and the form.