Everything vs. anything
One night, while walking on Kottbusser Tor, I noticed all of the
windows of the Commerzbank had been kicked in.
The treacly safety glass, armed by its viscosity, hadn’t
collapsed to the attack though, but rather developed into
intricate monochrome kaleidoscopes.
In between the glass and a crooked Luxaflex, hardly attractive
yellow advertisements hung from aluminium cables (far too strong
for their load):
Zufriedenheit garantiert & Die Bank an Ihrer Seite.
It was only the day after that I realised the potential of the
setup. But when I came back the windows had been replaced, the
blinds straightened and the ads unchanged. My new Canon also
remained untouched in my Muji backpack and I felt even more
useless carrying a tripod around.
Back in my studio I summarised the situation in a few Google
Image Search keywords to serendipitously find ‘Mannequins in
broken shop window’. This would become the texture for my new
sculpture.
Since I recently migrated to Berlin, the Deutsche Bank had not
approved my credit score for a credit card yet. I decided to use
the lively watermarked stock photo instead, as I could not
legally acquire the image from the image bank.
This digital image to my (supposed) disposal was 1300 pixels
wide and 867 high, and depicted two pale mannequins in black
tuxedos, standing in a shopping window behind a huge crack in
the glass (also take note of a plastic lily in the bottom right
corner). Still visible in the disrupted reflection some Toyota
Prius Taxis. This all overlaid with the earlier mentioned
watermark (Photoshop blending mode ‘lighten’).
The aspect ratio of the image was 2 to 1, so I decided to have
it printed 2 by 1 meter (which is roughly 79 x 39 inch). For it
to still look good when printed on this larger scale, I had to
pump it up to remain sharp, in a similar way the detectives of
Law & Order SVU get their CCTV images of rapists enhanced.
The software to do this couldn’t be purchased without a credit
card either so my unregistered version of ‘PhotoZoom Pro 5’ also
added its watermark.
I convinced the man at the print shop this really was the image
I wanted UV-printed on PET-G.
While assembling the sculpture it seemed undoubtedly the best
decision to leave the protective foil on.
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