Drinking with Caspar David Friedrich

Inquire about this work

Drinking Beer with Caspar David Friedrich, 2012. Mini-fridge with chrome emblem, edition of 3

A miniature 3D-printed model of Friedrich’s ice wreck, installed inside the freezer compartment of a working mini-fridge stocked with beer, its door embossed with a custom chrome emblem reading “Das Eismeer, Die gescheiterte Hoffnung.” Viewers open the fridge themselves to find the piece — the sublime disaster shrunk to a barroom prop, framed by consumption, refrigeration, and the small, literal cold of home appliances. The gesture folds the painting’s Romantic weight into social sculpture: the fridge invites handling, drinking, conversation — dismantling the ideological monumentality of the original image by returning it to an ordinary, communal, unheroic context.

Mini-fridge, 3D print, chrome emblem, beer · edition of 3 · Our Haus, Austrian Cultural Forum New York 2012 · Volta NY 2013 · Kunsthal Rotterdam 2015 · Kirchner Museum Davos 2018 · Museum Villa Rot 2019

Inquire about this work