No Image No Message

It takes a second look to affirm what you thought you saw in the first place. A pattern, energetic and decorative, almost to the point of triviality – purely abstract forms repeated to produce an ornamental field.
But once you know, or see, that the ornamentation is based on letters, and that the letters form words, then the repetition acquires another quality. The single slogan becomes a chant. Over and over again, a thousand voices shout: ‘No Image No Message!’
This thin line between image and message, between meaningful sign and abstract form, is where Martijn Sandberg produces what he calls his ‘Image Messages’.

‘No Image No Message’. Art as wallpaper, wallpaper as art.

Wallpaper installation, Galerie Markus Richter, Berlin, 2002.

Title: ‘No Image No Message’
Artist: Martijn Sandberg
Location: Galerie Markus Richter, Berlin
Size: wallpaper on walls, rolls 0.53m x 10m
Installation: 2002
Material: metalic silkscreen on wallpaper
Edition: ‘No Image No Message’, wallpaper

Photos by: Uwe Walter, Martijn Sandberg (3)