Our planet’s black gold is a finite resource. And when it is finally exhausted sometime during the next few decades, we’ll all be in the same boat. The human race has managed to use up something that was created in a millions of years-long process from the remains of plants and other organisms in just two centuries.
Cologne-based Anton Fuchs is the first artist to use crude oil as an art form. His paintings demonstrate the beauty of this natural resource by treating it as a ‘material‘. The black gold directly and immediately reveals its composition of layered structures, formations and stratification. With photography, Tini Papamichalis and Dietmar Baum depict it from an entirely different perspective. They have used high-resolution Hasselblad technology to create an ocean of oil. The layers of colour build up like dark waves that appear to run ashore on a beach of black pebbles. Things that remain hidden to the human eye are revealed by the photographs. Surfaces develop dynamics of their own and new depth is added to the original 2D painting.
Black Gold provides direct access to the tiniest structures of our natural resources. When we look at the black strata, we question our existence and the future of our planet. Abstraction forges the perfect link between microcosms and macrocosms.
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