THWRB3AT

Description

For modern graffiti, rail-track landscapes are the iconic landscapes of the soul: junctions, sidings, marshalling yards – places of ritual with their own aura. This is where historical myth and present-day practice meet up: the tracks upon which rail wagons move, come to rest, are marshalled; and the tracks that are left on these wagons themselves. French artist THWRB3AT works with a modular system to create line drawings that are inspired by these infrastructures. Part abstraction, part technical drawing, they recall – not by chance – the control panels of a signal box. In Völklingen, even the heavenwards-striving pipework of the former ironworks seems to mirror these archetypal forms. This relation to the steel plant demonstrates a profound reflection: if industrial modernity remains inconceivable without the railroad, so too does the rail network without the steel industry. By the same token, modern subway graffiti was born on the back of rail vehicles. THWRB3AT brings it back to the reason for its existence in a contemporary, minimalist-conceptual variant of this idea.

Robert Kaltenhäuser