Airblaster

In the three Airblaster photogravures, Martin Kippenberger juxtaposes black-and-white images of oddly shaped beds he had found in Copenhagen’s medical history museum with coloured images of failed rocket launches. As Niels Borch Jensen recalls, Kippenberger was interested in the idea of accidental beauty: ‘The rockets provided spectacular fireworks in their failure to do what they were supposed to do.’ Hung in order, the three sickbeds move higher on the images, ascending toward heaven. Airblaster is among Kippenberger’s last works; he died shortly after his visit to Copenhagen in March 1997.