Acrylic paint, steel dust, pigment, copper paste, glass, image transfer, uv varnish on wood and aluminium
220 x 170 cm
86 5/8 x 66 7/8 in
Copyright the artist & Harlan Levey Projects
The title of this painting is borrowed from Elias Canetti's book “Crowd and Power”. According to Canetti, the natural crowd is the open crowd; “there are no limits whatsoever to...
The title of this painting is borrowed from Elias Canetti's book “Crowd and Power”. According to Canetti, the natural crowd is the open crowd; “there are no limits whatsoever to its growth; it does not recognize houses, doors or locks and those who shut themselves in are suspect.” The overall composition of the collage comes from blown up pictures of sledgehammered car windows in reference to Philip Zimbardo's 1969 social experiment “broken windows”. The open crowd collage functions like the car experiment, the first blow to the surface triggers waves of vandalism and defragmentation, in the small pieces there are images from different riots from the 1992 LA riots to those in London 19 years later. In addition to historic juxtapositions, fictional material created from animated crowd behavior found in video games and other simulations is included in the intricacy of the broken windows that become a mirror of the crowd.