Atelier Van Lieshout

Naphta Cracker

2012

Steel
550 x 370 x 578 cm

The New Tribal Labyrinth wants to reinterpret and revalue the factories and installations of the Industrial Revolution, by creating large scale sculptural/technical installations, made in an improvised style with contemporary materials: blast furnaces and foundries, refineries and chemical installations textile mills and ceramics workshops. At first sight, it is not directly clear if these are part of a post-apocalyptic survival strategy, or instead represent a new utopian way of durable production.

Naphta Cracker is production unit that shows the complex process of making plastics. At the same time it wants to tell more about the value of this specific material, as plastics are made in a complicated way and out of scarce raw materials. Made in a neo-industrial style, it is hard to define in what era the artwork dates from: post-apocalyptic, Soviet, or an earlier past?

Naphta Cracker was part of the following exhibition(s):
Oil – Beauty and Horror in the Petrol Age, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Wolfsburg (DE), 2021 – 2022

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