WONDERFUL MAN
Audio ́visual installation.
Shattered tempered glass, LED projector with gobo slide. 4-channel sound by Rob Peterson (USA).
Futterställe (fodder barns), Ostrale 011, Dresden, Germany, 2011.
For thousands of years, man has dreamt of being able to fly like a bird. The first aircraft designers, like the Wright Brothers, certainly did have this dream in mind. Perhaps they thought of collateral commercial applications but surely their dream was one of simply reaching the sky to discover and feel the freedom and yet the supportive reliability due to mankind’s inventions of winged flight. "Wonderful Man" combines shattered tempered glass with a light projection through a gobo slide. It seems to reflect one of the great paradoxes of life: man’s capacity of brilliant innovation being matched only by his capacity of total self-destruction. One wonders sometimes how long we can continue to live this paradoxal life. It may come to one’s mind that a certain degree of destruction is necessary to leave space for inventions or innovations. Many of mankind’s great inventions date from periods when man had a huge desire or even a huge need for protection or defence like in times of crisis or wars. Thus, in such a context it is convenient that the artist creates a new form out of remaining material. The glass sheet, intact as it was in the beginning, needed to be destroyed before it could be transformed into a military aircraft. The aircraft’s reflections point out the powerfulness not only of this outlasting material but as well of the power that is inherent in those constructions.