Artist: Kyle Thurman
Exhibition title: Heat Theater
Venue: Off Vendome, Düsseldorf, Germany
Date: February 5 – March 7, 2015
Photography: Courtesy of the artist and Off Vendome, Düsseldorf
As of 2003, the American multinational oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil is the sole owner of the material Santoprene (TPV). Santoprene is a thermoplastic rubber designed to be weather and chemical resistant. It was first developed in the 1970s after research by the automotive industry in an attempt to find a new material for creating injection-molded tires. Due to the material’s flexibility, strength, and resistant properties, it has been successfully applied in many commercial industries (i.e. construction, medical, automotive). Santoprene is also noted to be highly efficient in terms of its recyclability – when used Santoprene is reprocessed, the resulting product has nearly identical properties to freshly manufactured Santoprene.
The particular form of Santoprene present at Off Vendome, Dusseldorf, is intended to provide a waterproof, chemical-resistant, and anti-slip flooring cover for an industrial workplace. The six Santoprene mats in the space are components of a single work:
Rays, Raze, Raise and Scents, Cents, Sense, 2015
In the lower-level of Off Vendome there is a hand-painted mural composed of imagery taken from various drawings by Heinrich Kley, a German political-cartoonist most well known for his critical depictions of industrial developments in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
On February 26, 2015, Off Vendome will open a location in New York with an inaugural exhibition by German artists Max Brand and Lena Henke. For the duration of Kyle Thurman’s exhibition in Dusseldorf, the façade window will be partially obscured with painted buttermilk.
