Challenger II (2009)
Acrylic glass, construction foam, silver finish, styrofoam, chipboard MDF
Measures: ca.132 cm x 100 cm x 14 cm
Challenger installation views / additional material
Challenger I, II, III, IV is a series of works which is connected to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster from 1986. „NASA shuttle orbiter mission STS-51-L and the tenth flight of Space Shuttle Challenger (OV-99) broke apart 73 seconds into its flight, killing all seven crew members, which consisted of five NASA astronauts and two Payload Specialists.“ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disaster). As a consequence of the explosions heavy cloud delineations came up on the sky. With my work i tried to rebuild four iconic images of this occurrence. The transformation of images into physical objects stimulated me to use construction materials like acrylic glass, styrofoam, MDF and – very important – construction foam. The acrylic plates, and the styrofoam kernel of the boxes are cutted. Into the hollow body i filled the construction foam – and i left my studio. Next day i was very surprised, how the construction foam expanded itself. So to say, i lost control over my own artwork. The nimbus of a generative process, of the detection and liberation of a given material’s own (construction foam) vital force interested me to produce the works.