Joachim Blank
2023
This artwork is site-specific.
Go to the location shown on the map in order to experience it in AR.
Artwork description
It is a multi-part work: an AR, a video loop and a small series of fine art prints. The moving AR object depicts a standing metallic turquoise lion/ess moving and shaking its head, as if the figure wants to shake off the large metallic splinters that condense around its head.
The work refers to the sleeping lion, a bronze sculpture by sculptor C. D. Rauch from 1828, which was placed on a grave monument by K.F. Schinkel for the Prussian General Scharnhorst at the Invalidenfriedhof in 1834.
Object description
The sleeping lion was seen at the time as a symbol of the "sleeping power of the fatherland". As a protective guard of the rest of the dead, the lion radiates security and serenity: The lion was long considered the "king of beasts." In the wild, it is acutely threatened with extinction. This knowledge shifts the originally intended narrative from the grave site of the Prussian general. It is possible that he - the lion or the general - is simply tired, exhausted or sick and no longer alert.
More information
http://www.joachimblank.comAbout the artist
Joachim Blank (b. 1963 in Aachen, lives in Berlin) is a visual artist who works with different media, materials and formats. In his life the confrontation with the digital world has become a central aspect of his own artistic practice. Blanks central question revolves about how media perception are changing the perception of materiality, how medial arguments are enrolled in the surfaces of the objects and are transforming them. It is about investigating the materiality of things and images, their outer appearance and physical presence in terms of surface-, meaning- and knowledge production of our time. The spectrum of his work ranges from collaborative network projects to space-related installations, sculptural and painterly works. As Blank & Jeron (with Karl Heinz Jeron) he realized early net art projects and installations (1993 – 2005). Since 2018 Blank & Jeron restarted their collaboration with Augmented Reality projects --> http://clubnetz.info. In 2021 they realized in collaboration with Sakrowski the AR-project https://simultaneity.xyz as a digital intervention in public space as part of "Art in Urban Space at Karl-Marx-Allee" Berlin.