"X-Plantation 06"
c-print on acrylic glass on aluminum Dibond (Diasec)
Signed, dated (pencil), titled and numbered on lable on verso.
Airplane, plane, plantation, a flight simulator known for its realism (X-Plane): A close reading of the title always goes a long way towards identifying Hubert Blanz's works. If you delve deeper into the detailed information on X-Plantation, his interests and working methods also become clear: "Cultivation of living tissue outside the body on an artificial culture medium in a tissue culture in order to study growth and reproduction and compare it with the processes in the living organism." The content-related interlocking of the terms mentioned at the beginning is reflected in the formal interlocking, in the superimposition and staggering of the aerial photographs of airstrips. All of the image material comes from the Internet, from our second world, which we can now click through seamlessly with the help of incredibly perfect satellite images. The cameras in space keep an eye on everything and record everything. For the user, geographical distances shrink to a few centimetres and numbers, depending on the size of the screen. The virtual world of photos and geodata spread out before us in this way allows us to navigate across the globe in a matter of seconds, but also across time. Ultimately, we are looking at a jigsaw puzzle of images of different ages, some of which date back years.
For the screenshots, Hubert Blanz works like a camera: he determines the section, distance and angle of view, then releases the shutter. After cropping, the targeted airports are no longer geographically identifiable destinations, but graphic structures of routes in various color values with linear patterns and labels - except in his computer files, where the images are still saved for montage under "Amsterdam" or "Denver".
Ultimately, we see the taxiways laid out before us as if in tiers, as if the aim were to handle air traffic even more efficiently. An exaggerated futuristic idea that is not so absurd?
(Ruth Horak)
