Ingmar König

(NL volgt) I once spent an afternoon at a paintball arena. A place made only for the practice of this particular game, it is designed for the measurement and speed of the human body and built in size for the duration of one game. The activity taking place in such an arena does not resemble anything even close to an actual fight. It could, however, be considered as a stage for the appearance of precision and endurance. Thought has been put into invisible paths upon which people move from object to object; hiding, attacking and hiding again. These objects, or shelters are set upon different levels of the arena; all carrying benefits together with disadvantages, to keep the participants moving. Every component of the arena comes from a perspective that might be overlapping with design; operating within a balance between aesthetic and function. An arena like such is a fundamental example of the use of facades as decor. But if every part of an area is decor, then figuratively there is no facade anymore. Although sometimes a lot of effort is put into the decoration of such an arena, it does not even wish to illustrate the evocation of an actual war or battle. The goal is not to convince players of a fictional battle taking place, maybe because war imagery has never before been such a taboo and so present at the same time, but a paintball arena tends to abstract the feeling of tension and stress. I am intrigued by such places and in my practice, I wish to make installations in a similar way, so that the viewer will become a tourist, searching for an overarching context. All the works seem to come from a field of aesthetics that sometimes feels unfamiliar within the art context; standing with one leg in the realm of theater or film decor and with the other in the art-world.