carsten nicolai

chiffre

1997
oil paint, graphite, ink on paper mounted on canvas
diptych
200 x 400 cm
chiffre

today's world is confronted with an information flood whose decipherment is a challenge to logic. both panels, entitled chiffre, cannot be decoded. since their intrinsic logic is insufficient access depends on the degree of vision. unambiguous decoding is denied – similar to texts that have been written in unknown alphabets. as soon as the logic of a language is deciphered it loses imaginativeness becoming a one-dimensional statement. the bar code-directed panels recombine to form new combinations legible only by abstract means.