Posts Tagged ‘Space Art’

The Meat Packing Plant

February 5, 2022

HBATK® Meat Packing Plant/The Secret Missile Silo, painting on board ©2037 by Torsten Slama, COD
Vize 4: Tajná raketová sila / Vision 4: Das geheime Raketensilo / Vision 4: The Secret Missile Silo,
2020 Öl auf Holz / oil on wood 70,2 x 60 cm / 27.6 x 23.6 inches

This 2020 painting harks back to several versions of the same motive, a 2006 drawing, another smaller 2009 drawing, a comparatively large painting from the same year and a later, 2012 re- or overpainting of that painting. It is based on a Heljan plastic model, the Heljan #673 N Scale Meat Packing Plant kit. While painting this iteration of the structure, one of the artist’s roughly four favorite and therefore recurring real world or model-type architectural structures, the artist was grappling with ocular clouding (encroaching blindness) and also with a newly developed (or degenerated) technique of mixing organic substances with oil paint and acrylics, applying the resulting mixture, uneven because of different solubility of its constituents, often in half dried states or different phases of coagulation, onto the canvas with brushes in varying states of distress, interspersing the emerging image with highlights of synthetic luminescent powders and pastes. In this painting the artist perhaps reached a pinnacle in the materialization of a certain style he envisioned – a style where the constant fight between the youthful wish for perfect execution and the cosmic truth of decay leads to its own results, where human mind control and the freedom of molecular motion and chemical interaction coexist, where the Jungian amateur pursuing personal narcissistic goals of alchemical omnipotency finds respite in the struggle between time-bound limitations of the human flesh with the desires of the mind and the phantasy of timelessness.*

*Timelessness of art, which Oskar Kokoschka found perfectly represented in Rembrandt’s “Self-Portrait at the Age of 63” at the National Gallery in London. While bemoaning the bombing of Dresden, visiting the National Gallery at the suggestion of his wife, he found back his inner peace at the contemplation of old skin, “like the skin of a dead chicken”, in the way in which Rembrandt understood to apply his own virtuosity in an inimitably masterful loose yet perfectly controlled application of paint, where molecular structure of the medium and chemical changes taking place in the process of drying and hardening, together with said virtuosity and sheer dexterity of application lead to a lasting and static depiction of a particular stage in a process which in the natural universe leads through life to death and complete disintegration in a matter of only a few years. **

**This anecdote is repeated here not to glorify the artist’s own desires of creating such an effect, but to humble it, as the above painting is not only a very serious effort, but also a typical example of Schlawinertum, as a surrogate to virtuosity and diligence, in contemporary art. It might be even that some hypothetical onlooker would only see the jejune and the would-be where in the eyes of the creator there is at least a glimmer or echo of the inner truth they sought, approached in baby steps which are much too short to reach their goal even within the whole lifetime of a person so encumbered by their own deviant desire for a sorrow-free life, which so often leads in truth to an inordinate accumulation of inner sorrows, often seen and belittled as minor by others, as they are sorrows of the imagination. While someone like Dostojewski, who knew exactly the interaction of sorrows of the imagination and the true sorrow of, for example, hemorrhoids, which so often result from sins of the mind, was so perfectly cognisant of the fact that nobody is entitled to define or judge the difference between imaginary or true sorrow, as their is none in degrees of pain they inflict.

Drawing and text © 2057 by Torsten Slama and the C.O.D

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House for Quasi Phantom Regions

November 28, 2016

Country House with Hip Roof B8090 by Torsten Slama 2016

Country House with Hip Roof B 8090
(Oils on canvas on wood, 50,3 x 62,8cm)

This house is for the lover of open country, but with no need for the flora and fauna usually associated with it. It is a house for the Frommian necrophiliac. This country lies on the surface of a planet roughly the size of Earth, but much heavier and with a very thick, almost water-like foggy atmosphere. Consequently the ground resembles the deep sea floor on Earth. A hint of some form of vegetation, either aquatic or coniferous can be surmised or easily dismissed in the milky background. Tastefully arranged on the premises are one replicated Silurian nautilus shell, various simplified crystal sculptures made of polymethylmethacrylate coated with transparent SiO2 thin films in hues of yellow, pink, and green, and several geometric primitives of synthetic plaster. The house itself is the sparsely ornamented, simplified version of a terranean postmodern country house catering for the aspiring single person or couple in the lower medium affluent income range and has the catalog number B 8090. It is especially suited for the writer of semi-popular fantasy novels. Note that it comes without garage, as such is not necessary on a planet without any destinations to travel to. The windows, though ostensibly made of some glass-like material, are either covered from the inside with blue boards, or the whole house might be filled with some blue tinted medium or nutritive solution. The inside of the house might be dark, artificially illuminated, or not existing. The owner or owners of the house might be immaterial, but still in need of spiritual nourishment, provided by the large space crystal floating in the dense, soup-like sky. This atmospheric painting © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the Fantasy Society

Planetary School for Youth-Oriented Teachings of Right and Wrong

November 26, 2016

 Drawing of a school for problematic youths, staffed with progressive teachers, this drawing © Torsten Sama and the Progressive Society, 2021

Hardt-Waltherr Hämer, Juvenile Delinquent Youth Project,
Ingolstadt, 1962-66 (A3, 2016)

This voluminous structure of concrete and gold tinted glass is located in a progressive settlement called “Ingolstadt” on a far-away double planet in the system of the theoretical Öpik-Oort-Cloud. The building is fashioned as a life-size replica of the actual edifice, the municipal theater in the city of Ingolstadt, Germany, Earth. The building itself is rather imposing, especially in the realm of the horizontal, but this aspect of massiveness has been nicely set off with an arrangement of haphazardly placed street signs of unclear meaning, and a carefully unfinished look of the surrounding street scenery. Also a meticulously arranged add-on to the composition are the two vintage motor-bikes of German make parked in front of it. They belong to the school’s most progressive teachers, one fatherly male religion teacher, and one instructor  for violence-free negotiation techniques of uncommitted gender. The helmet placed to the side of the motor bike in front serves as a signal of trust. This is a theft-free zone. Looming over the horizon, the second planet of the double system, which is also earth-like, with vast and mostly untapped supplies of oxygen and water, left unsettled, serving as a recreational area for the partner planet. In the sky, floating over the school, a general semantics surveillance unit which  scans the whole perimeter of that school for occurrences of plain right and plain wrong according to objectivist criteria. The  gold-tinted glass panes of the building reflect the surroundings in unclear abstract configurations while still giving a hint of transparency. This atmospheric rendering © 2021 by Torsten Slama and the Progressive Society

World Wide Instrumentation Centre with 1912 Packard Landaulet

March 9, 2013

World Wide Instrumentation Centre for the Betterment of Mankind According to Tellurian Principles © 2021 by The Instrumentalists, Dr. Hecate Ecdysone, Torsten Slama

World Wide Instrumentation Centre with 1912 Packard Landaulet
(A3, mixed media, © 2013 by The Instrumentalists)

After the great unification of all continents into one supercontinent Eufricasia-Panamerica, the need for a coordinated world wide interactive system of communication and production is stated and instigated by the Instrumentalists. The whole world joins in multilingual agreement, and thus a Centre for World Wide Instrumentation is set up in Tripolitania, formerly district of Libya. a medium-grade metropolitan area located nearly exactly in the geographical centre of Eufricasia-Panamerica.

If vagueness, ambiguity and symbolism are reactionary forces bringing unrest, totalitarianism, and war, World Wide Instrumentation, with the totally concise and logical flow of goods, services, and communication it provides, will pave the way to a bright future of love and happiness. The dangers of a chronically crisis-ridden world economy or the inadvertent cross breeding of all sorts of squirrels into a race of super squirrels can be easily averted by the world wide employment of completely standardized instruments of measurement, production, transportation, and communication. A universal currency will soon be followed by a universal language for communication between people, animals, and machines: POYUTL, a language consisting of three consonants and three vowels, 21 syllables, and thus, using the well known formula of Newton, a total of 210 two-syllable words, which can express about everything. Thus, according to Tellurian principles, one Tellurian deity, OUY-PYTOLU, will come into being, a sentient and conscious superorganism, composed of all people, animals, and things on the surface of the earth and under.© 2021 by Hecate Herma Ecdysone, The Instrumentalists, Torsten Slama Historical Society

The Parable of the Immortal Uterus

January 10, 2013

The Parable of the Immortal Uterus, 297 × 420mm, pencil, coloured pencil, acrylics on paper, © 2013 by The Parabolist Society

The Parable of the Immortal Uterus, 297 × 420mm, pencil, coloured pencil, acrylics on paper, © 2013 by The Parabolist Society

Please read the following excerpt from a conversation between the humanist, the monk, and the priest with full mental alertness. Read it with an open mind. Heed the pitfalls of untrustworthy translation.

The humanist: ” The fruit is rare. No tears before. I imagine this story then has traditionally been a more trivial and exquisitely romantic accident.”

The monk said: ” Truly. But these poems belong to the family of food, drink and boudoir stories. Moreover most breeze-and-moonlight tales but indulge in secret relations with women about eloping. They just do not have the dark children’s true release one or two. Think this: into the world of its passion color ghosts contrast with previous tradition. “

The humanist: ” Why don’t you and I have to take this great degree and some is not a virtue? ”

The monk said: ” Are you with me and I to the unreal immortal uterus, and witness the fool delivery of this romantic evil ghost? Now has half dust but still not complete works. ”

Priest : ” Not only that will go with you.*Illustrative sketch and translation © 2021 by Torsten Slama
*Zhen Shiyin is understood but unintelligible. “Stupid ” is anything. Then I came up, smiled and asked: ” The second division, please. ” The monk is also busy in reply when asked. Shiyin is to have said: ” Comfortable smell immortal. division on causal real world rare. But if I understand your disciple Yu, turbidity big dumb is preparing a fine disciple by washing its ear. Listening can also be a warning from sinking. ” Alternative Title laughs: ” This is a mystery not be pre-discharged. Then don’t forget two people can come out of the fire pit. ” Shi Yin listened, too inconvenienced to ask for laughs: ” Mystery not be pre-discharged, but suitable for a cloud fool! Somehow or can see? ” The monk said: ” If you ask it but once. ” She took out and give Shiyin. Shiyin took turns having a distinctive look at jade table with clear new writing. A ” magic stone”:  There are several (4) words. Now she wants to look at it when the monk said: “To fairyland is strong from the hands away, and one was a stone arch with four characters but fantasyland.llustrative sketch and translation © 2021 by Torsten Slama

Space-Crystal for Sun-Worshippers

January 20, 2010

Essay on Interplanetary Communication: Thoughts in Space. Space Art by Torsten Slama

Essay on Interplanetary Communication: Thoughts in Space. A Speculative Rendition.

This artificially bred space crystal, ten times more dense than an ordinary diamond, yet super-lightweight, is installed in the center of an impassable desert on the remote planet Elorg and converts solar light rays into mental energy which can be transferred to human minds and induce heliocentrism, or sun worshipping,  a quasi-religious, symbolistic mental attitude which is instrumental in creating or maintaining hierarchical, evolving, essentially unstable societies.

The atomic grid of this crystal is dense, but very loose, so that the carbon molecules are oscillating in a random pattern, and the optical properties of the crystal are that of a non-linear amplifier. The complex-refractive-index spectra with an anomalous dispersion around a J-aggregate absorption band are randomly changing, thus ever new, hypnotic patterns are being produced. The golden four-pronged poyutl in the foreground samples the light patterns and serves as a converter from optical to mental wavelengths. The resulting encephalographic patterns are sent to a relay station, which broadcasts the mind-patterns over entire galaxies. This is an experimental installation. The crystal is held suspended in mid-air by photon energy.     Copyright (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama and Gottstein Strohkopp

Cooperative Raiffeisen Institute "Wilhelm Reich"

October 21, 2009

Cooperative Institute "Wilhelm Reich", Oil on Canvas, 90x170cm, Torsten Slama, 2008

Cooperative Institute “Wilhelm Reich”, Oil on Canvas, 90x170cm, 2008

This cooperative institute of the Raiffeisen-type serves as a trading post, information exchange place, and a general department-store-type administrative center for settlers on thinly populated planets or asteroids. It can replace an entire economy as a regulatory device. It functions without a currency, without money, without any unit of economical accumulation. Thus, it ensures the well-being of all without the creation of unnecessary boundaries between haves and have-nots. Raiffeisen-type cooperative institutes effectuate a loosening of all economical muscles in a planetary society, and so this particular institute, located on the planet Oog-Ronn, is logically dedicated to Wilhelm Reich, who invented the vegetotherapeutic procedures for loosening the muscles in a human organism.

This institute, like many other institutes of its kind on similarly far-off planets without natural satellites, harbours a school for the Boibel-Loth alphabet, to propagate lunar knowledge also on moonless planets.   (c) 2017 by Torsten Slama

Image of the Week: The Vaporization of the American Middle Class

February 7, 2009

The Vaporization of the American Middle Class, Airbrush on Cardboard, 2006, Torsten Slama

The Vaporization of the American Middle Class (Pencil and acrylics on cardboard, 70x100cm, 2006)

This airbrush image contains depictions of imaginary asteroid-repelling architecture and a couple of human figures taken from the film “Planet of the Vampires”.  It comes in a handcrafted gold-plated frame with white sides. © 2017 Torsten Slama and International Publications Organisation World Wide