Silent Dazzle, 2014
Wallpaper. 390 x 390 cm
(Wallpaper) Exclusive artwork example for LABoral by Metahaven, 2014 © Metahaven.
Dazzle camouflage, or dazzle painting, was a family of ship camouflage used extensively in World War I and II. Credited to artist Norman Wilkinson and zoologist John Graham Kerr, it consisted of complex patterns of geometric shapes in contrasting colours, interrupting and intersecting each other.
Unlike some other forms of camouflage, dazzle works not by offering concealment but by making it difficult to estimate a target's range, speed and heading. Dazzle was intended more to mislead the enemy about the position to take up than actually to miss the shot when firing.
With this new commission, Metahaven have taken the dazzle strategy and embedded it into the architecture of this exhibition as a wallpaper. The result is a glitch in the landscape, like a splinter in our gaze that intends not to conceal but to reveal the sensitivity of visibility.
Courtesy: Metahaven
