Mein Kampf
Acrylic on canvas, 120 x 40cm 2007
Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf
Adolph Hitler's evil text creates a visceral impact in paint. Red dominates, mainly because of his ranting obsession with Communism. The visceral surface of the painting could be reminiscent of the plastination techniques of Gunter Van Hagen's Bodyworlds exhibitions. This painting has been exhibited against or alongside Primo Levi's If This is a Man, as a comment on the concentrationary imaginary. It is meant to show that colours are not simply colours but that they can have a devastating meaning. Hitler endlessly reiterates the symbolism and meaning of colours within the text of Mein Kampf, hence a kind of recurring echo of the German flag. The electric blue colour that runs through from the beginning and somewhat enlivens the painting is a quirk of translation - from the phrase 'out of the blue'. The original German does not contain a reference to blue, so this becomes further abstracted through the double translation from German to English and then once more to paint.
Mein Kampf - Detail 1
Mein Kampf - Detail 2
Primo Levi
This painting is something of a commentary on the importance of the witness. The colours that emerge from Primo Levi's account of his concentrationary existence (barely life) at Auschwitz, are the only readable factor in a grey abstracted field. The colours are highly symbolic and meaningful. The preponderance of gold, for example, is referential to the gold extracted from Jewish teeth in the concentration camps. The exterior grey border is also a nod to the debates about the representability or otherwise of the Holocaust, without being a symbol of it.