Wilhelm Sasnal
Factory
2000, Oil on Canvas
101 x 101cm |
Painted
from a famous propaganda image, Sasnal's Factory swaps the
celebratory ideal of the Socialist Worker for the impersonal
hardness of mechanised production. Sasnal treats painting
as a reductive process: information is lost in translation
from photography to painting.
Using the original photo's black-and-white tones, details
are eradicated through heightened contrast, the image simplified
through ‘overexposure' and the intervention of the artist's
hand. Sasnal's replicated images are dissociated from their
once powerful meanings: they exist only as mere vestiges of
themselves. |