LUX VULGARIS — Loke Berg

LUX VULGARIS

Telescopic stands (x4) B=Ø50 x H120-200cm square metal pipes, nuts and bolts, paint

Ballhead mounts (x4) 6 x 10 x 3cm metal, bolts, paint

Sandbag sculpture 43 x 43 x 108cm cotton fabric, cotton thread, sand

Mattress wall 334 x 245 x 30cm foam, cotton padding, cotton fabric, filt, nylon thread

Ladder w. sandbags 40 x 80 x 150cm wood, sandbags

Lightsource 40 x 40 x 50cm modifyed lamp, paint

Mirror 24 x 60 x 2cm bathroom mirror in welded steel frame, paint

Screenprint on glass 33 x 46 x 2cm in welded steel frame

In the early 1940s, cultural objects and artefacts where embedded all across Europe, to protect them from aerial bombings. Paintings were rolled together and stacked in crates, leaving hundreds of empty frames yawning at the museum walls. Sculptures were tucked in tailor made coffins, filled with sand and sealed, before everything was taken away and put to rest, usually in calm, countryside locations or underground. For the immobile frescoes and sculptures, which there was no possibility to move, they were protected by scaffolding and sandbags, sewed and built by the local community, gigantic patchworks of mattresses were hung before the vast altars of the cathedrals, under Byzantine apses coated in aluminium foil.