APKALLU (LOT 101)

2021

Graphite on paper, crayon on paper, mounted on disband
Over the a period of more than a year I have kept coming back to an Assyrian relief of an Apkallu, a winged deity anointing a sacred tree. The relief was escavated at the Northwest Palace of Nimrud in the 19th century by the British Archeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard.
 

In 2018 Christies sold the 3000 year old, approx 2×2 m large assyrian relief for more than 30 million $, a record price. Aquired in the mid-19th century by the american missionary Dr. Henri Byron Haskell from Layard, it ended up at the Virginia Theological Seminary until it was sold at Christies. It is not publicly known who bought it and where it is now.
 

It has resulted in a number of smaller and larger works over the last few years, mostly in frottages build on the shapes of the figures in the relief.I have never seen the original relief and have had to rely on photographs.
The frottages are made from photocollages of elements of the relief, the slight relief of the paper is enough to give a sense of 3-dimensionality. But the frottages are always only depicted as slightly ghostly fragments of the gigantic relief now hidden again from view.
 

Post am Rochus
October 2021 – March 2023