(UN)NATURAL

at the AKINCI stand of art rotterdam 2014, HUNNIE admired

Persijn Broersen & Margit Lukács, The Sun that Never Set, overview at AKINCI 2013, photo Peter Cox

“In the work Les Zones Terrestres, Broersen & Lukács reinterpret a French wallpaper* from 1855, one of the first reproducible, non‐repeating panoramic wallpapers. The panorama took over the walls of countless homes in the nineteenth century, immersing the viewer spatially and simulating an imaginary world, as a kind of an archaic version of an artificial reality. By then, the era of mass production of the imaginary had begun, leading to the disappearance of the distinction between reality and it’s representation. Broersen & Lukács have carefully reconstructed, layer upon layer, this utopian all‐encompassing landscape with the most ethereal material possible: the panorama is constructed with hundreds of polygon 3D‐models. In the digital space mathematically defined polygons are used to create virtual objects. In Les Zones Terrestres they create an immaterial skin covering the solid wooden panels.” – Source: AKINCI press release

* Les Zones Terrestres (The Earthly Zones), Zuber, Rixheim France, 1855. Wood printed on paper. The complete design of the wallpaper measured 16meter wide by 2.80. The paper was in production until the beginning of the 20th century.