Or: The robust canvas.

That’s it. I’m back from Burning Man. Actually, I came back yesterday, Wednesday. But the jet lag (and probably the three Rusty Nails in a Reno bar the night before) made me somewhat sleepy and so I spent the most of the time since then in bed …

I had taken with me a patina painting by Karin Sander. And I’m told that Austria is waiting to see the results. So let me just briefly explain what happened. I had the canvas in a sealed envelope which I opened the second the wheels hit the desert, or the “playa”, as the Burners call it. In order to be able to carry the painting with me at all times, I attached two Tesa Powerstrips to the back of it and carried it around my neck on to lanyards. Hurray for Tesa Powerstrips: Dust storms, port-a-potties, flame-throwers, art cars, hiking the desert …

On the left you can see the patina painting attached to a box of rebar while we set up the art project “Gort” by Stefan Werner and Uli Klumpp (an array of six giant theremins). We had 8 hours or something of dust storm that felt like sand-blast peeling. On the right you can see the painting in front of the Basura Sagrada. A huge structure made from scrap wood where the Burners leave messages, place ashes of their deceased or things they are sorry for. The temple is burnt on the last night every year.

Naturally, I didn’t want to wear the artwork at all times, which is why I sometimes attached it to a structure. On the left, it is hanging on the shade structure in our camp. On the right side, I took it to the top of a 10-story steel structure called Babylon, where I went for breakfast one morning.

Here is a glimpse of the environment the patina painting was created in. Well, the desert. I had to tell maybe 50 people what is up what that painting and one woman was like “Oh, Karin Sander!”. And a lot of people made jokes about pouring their beer over it but actually all of them were too shy to even touch it.

And after seven and a half days in the desert, running half naked after the water truck (yes me, with the painting, no pictures) and being rained on by alcohol (after being highly compressed, coloured and exploded in mid air, the unburned drops falling back down on the audience), this is what the painting looks like now:

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 2:13 pm and is filed under All-Round Report.