Above the Law / Investigator K-9

^{Police Investigator K-9, pencil, coloured pencil on pink tone paper, A4 (210 x 297 mm / 8.3 x 11.7 inches)}

This drawing is based on a film still from the 1988 Steven Seagal vehicle “Above the Law”. He is striking a somewhat striking posture with a manly thumb hooked under the belt of his blue jeans, and a very interesting way of holding the handset of a public telephone while leaning against its sturdy metal body, tagged in a very haphazard fashion with various names, among them, standing out due to size and color, the name “Aline”. Also featured, a star of Betlehem.

Although largely done in pencil a few highlights are added in the colours blue and red. Steven Seagal’s head is replaced with that of a German Shepherd – the idea of making the head of a male protagonist a beast’s head is of course epitomized in various illustrations to the story, The Beauty and the Beast. The idea is to underscore the fact that manliness, especially its sexual aspects, expresses itself best in animal attributes, the whole world of masculine sexuality being anti-social, anti-civilization, etc., and the reality of the sexual act being a bloody business with death as an end result (see also, the wolf man).

General impression of blotchiness of the reproduction comes from discoloration, curliness or waviness of paper, stemming from excess humidity, water damage, hand grease. The paper used is of extreme thinness, like letter paper.

Artwork © 2057 by Torsten Slama

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Dead Father Institute in Chinese Landscape

^{Dead Father Cryogenic Institute in Chinese Landscape, 30×60 cm, oil on STYLEX prefabricated canvas&stretcher}

This is another effort in a planned series of paintings in the classical Chinese style. Based on elements from Ming Dynasty landscape paintings, it features a Cryogenic Institute, a stylized 1920 Ford Runabout, a family of water buffalos, perhaps the C.O.D. – appointed custodians of the Dead Father Cryogenic Institute, a storage facility for the dead fathers of a past human civilization, first featured in a ca. 2003 airbrush painting as the “Wilhelm Reich Cryogenic Institute”. The narrative of legendary purport of the painting is however only a pretext for a kind of painterly exercise, in the style of what the civil servants in various Chinese dynasties turned to painting as a kind of unpaid profession (a very much glorified hobby), and their masterworks were often mere exercises in the style of a colleague in another part of the huge empire. These paintings were scrolls, and mostly stored in shelves, to be unrolled, like books, to be scrutinized, evaluated, perused, in solitude or together with esteemed guests. Eventually, they ended up in one of the Emperor’s huge art vaults, who had a strong believe that his empire was only as strong and long-living as the art works created under its auspices by its servants.

This painting is of course permanently unrolled, mounted on a mass produced stretcher, painted in contemporary oil colours. It is in this way only a nostalgic simulation, but also an exercise.