Made in China #12 Painting

oil paint on canvas spruce wood frame tag with handwritten signature and title two heavy-duty hangers (mounted) The artistic starting point of “Made in China” was Ralph Baudach's journey to Zanzibar in 2018. On a beach on the island's east coast he came across hundreds of pieces of clothing that the ocean had previously washed ashore. Presumably those were the contents of a shipping container that had gone overboard somewhere on the more than 7,000 km wide Indian Ocean east of Zanzibar. Many of the textiles featured a visual dynamic, due to the way the tides had shaped them on the beach. Instinctively Ralph Baudach took photographs of the visually most outstanding pieces. He digitally cleaned the motifs of algae, seaweed and other flotsam to increase the contrast between the colorful textiles and the purity of the white sand. He then commissioned one of the countless Chinese painting studios to create oversized oil painting copies of the photographs. The CO2 footprint of the works should be outright negative to underline the artistic message. This was accomplished by sending countless e-mails back and forth between Germany and China, sending lots of photos of intermediate stages and finally shipping the approved oil paintings in two batches to Germany by plane. Afterwards the painted canvases were stretched onto spruce wood frames made in Germany. On the back of each work Ralph Baudach attached an oversized label (designed by himself and also produced in China) made of the same polyester material as standard clothing tags. This turned each oil painting into a sculpture conveying the message of the whole series: “Made in China“ is an aesthetically and spatially powerful comment on globalisation, environmental pollution, capitalism, plagiarism, fast fashion, human recklessness and the simultaneous love for beauty. “Made in China“ is an open series and is constantly being extended by further works.