Hands as if Controlled by an External Force Print

Being a pianist myself, encountering the silent film „The Hands of Orlac“ was an inspiration for a series of monochrome drawings and paintings about metaphors for piano playing and using one’s hands in general. The project touches the relation between body and mind, the estrangement from parts of the body, and also the feeling of a part of oneself standing in for the whole. „Hands as if Controlled by an External Force“ depicts an outcry in the moment of realization that what seemed to be „mine“ is remotely-controlled. In „Hands of Orlac“ this Controller is a typical expressionist-silent-film-bad-character roping the movie hero, a pianist played by Conrad Veidt, into the delusion, that the musicians new hands, gained by an emergency operation from a hanged murderer, take over control. A turn of direction in the flow of will and intuition that frustrates first of all playing but then love and life, too. To me, this strange story these days has it’s counterpart in the tablets and phones whose inner worlds willingly take control, if we let them. There is a happy end, in the movie... The beautiful work, changing in it’s character between drawing and painting, comes on it’s original 100 x 100 cm drawing board, stretched to it by wet bonding tape. You are free to take it off the panel or—as the artist himself does—see the latter as an integral part, adding to the artwork’s performance.

Print:Giclee on Fine Art Paper

Size:10 W x 8 H x 0.1 D in

Size with Frame:15.25 W x 13.25 H x 1.2 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.