In 1908, Adolf Loos published a polemic modern architecture pamphlet titled “Ornament and Crime”. Ornamentation, he argues, is redundant, cost-intensive kitschy decoration, and an expression of the cultural backwardness which can be found in primitive cultures, and which is not representative of modern man. “The barbarian era,” the architect concludes, “is finally past.”

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Only a few years later, Siegfried Kracauer showed that even the modern era, which strives for practicality and rationalization, produces ornaments on its surface. He argues that these ornamentations are an expression of modern mass society, visual representations of modern life and its realities. The ornamentation is not taken into consideration by the masses who produce it. It develops without their knowledge. They do not produce it consciously or on purpose, which is why it resembles “the aerial shots of landscapes and cities”, in which patterns only emerge for the distant viewer. more »

Robert Lucander moved from Finland to Berlin one year before the Wall fell. The prospect of reunification peaked interest in the other side. Differences between east and west became clear. The painter realized, to his own surprise and fascination, that the discourse over various cultural shadings was not simply metaphorical rhetoric, but rather a very real detail that needed to be taken seriously: Lucander ordered industrially produced, color-standardized acrylic lacquer that had been produced in the east. In comparison to the same western version of the product, it exhibited an amazingly different quality of color.

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The experience of limiting the artistic material to cultural characteristics strengthened Lucander’s interest in a force of expression which does not only result from the creative act of the artist, but which lies within the given material already. He begins by investigating the material as a medium with temporal, more »