History is Made of Different Shades of Grey

The project History is Made of Different Shades of Grey which Kevin van Braak has been developing since 2011 has a contribution arising from his research in Belgrade in 2014. The project consists of the reconstructed office desks of influential and often controversial former world leaders such as Hitler (together with the famous world globe he had in his office in the Reich Chancellery), Stalin, Mao, Nixon, Mussolini, Franco, and now Tito. The artist makes almost identical reproductions of their desks based on the measurements of the originals. The only thing that differs is that all the desks are realized in another material from the original and are coated in polyurea, which gives them a thick, grey rubber-like layer and visually unifies the whole series. With such an intervention, the original desks are translated into the art world as sculptures that have lost their functionality or the representation of power the originals once had. Nevertheless, the stories behind these desks and the documents that were signed on them had a vast influence on global politics and consequently shaped an historical era. The symbolic message of unifying the desks with different shades of gray is derived from the story of the globe on Hitler’s desk on which all the countries in the world were shown in one shade of grey and overwritten with the word Deutschland.

* The work Tito’s Desk is part of the exhibition „T“ Rossella Biscotti & Kevin van Braak, which is happening in the Salon of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade (14, Pariska St) from December 9th, 2016 till January 23rd, 2017 and in the Škuc Gallery in Ljubljana from February 3rd till March 3rd, 2017.