Philipp Hölke

Art

GoodBiden, America

A square flag scraped down to dark, white and rust bands — goodbye and the name fused, the stars already gone.

A square canvas of horizontal scraped bands — dark brown-black at the top, then chalky white, rust and bruised purple — reading as an American flag whose stars have been painted out and whose stripes have been dragged until they almost fail.

Horizontal bands dragged across a square — dark, then chalk, then rust — until the field reads as a flag that has had its stars removed and its stripes worn down to weather. The title fuses the farewell and the name so they have to be read as one word. America is what is left on the canvas after the greeting.

No portrait, no slogan, no campaign colour kept clean. The paint is the whole argument: a national cloth pulled through the same gesture until the stripes are only the memory of a direction.