Jörn Vanhöfen

The deluge scene is undoubtedly a mysterious apocalyptic landscape shrouded in the misty vapor emitted by waste floating on a river. Vanhöfen’s deluge is an ominously prophetic mystified scene.

The image takes the viewer back to the biblical scene of the ark resting on Mt. Ararat in the famous 19th Century etching by French painter, Gustave Dorè. At the foot of the mountain lie the remains of humanity and animals destroyed by the flood, floating like discarded tires on the mouldy waters of Vanhöfen’s photograph.

Alongside this scene, a shimmering towering silver pyramid (Duisburg # 121) spreads momentary illusions, but actually these are the burial grounds of an insatiable consumer culture, the execution site of those whose identity has been erased.