Barrel You!
Installation, 45x45x220cm, crude oil/petrolium, glass, copper, wood, stone

An installation in the form of a large hourglass glass that is filled with a resource we never see in its pure form, but strongly dominates our daily lives: petroleum.

Fuel, oil, plastics, medicine, cosmetics are fossil products based on petroleum, and have become indispensable from our daily lives. For more than 150 years the toxic material from the depths of the earth set up the basis of a fast industrial and technological progress. Today all sectors of the economy are dependent on petroleum. About 81% of the global energy demand is fed by fossil fuels. But fossil energy sources are finite. Possibly at the end of the 21st Century most of the global petroleum resources will be exhausted. In the foreseeable future we need to get our daily energy needs entirely from renewable energy sources.

The installation Barrel You! uncovers crude oil in its pure form, makes it vulnerable and visible in the shape of an hourglass, dripping towards the future and finite end of it. The liquid volume of the upper glass bottle carries two-tenths of a Barrel (1 bbl. = 158.987294928 liters), the international trading unit of fossil oil. The drip interval is matched to the period of the exhibition and let drop down about 32 liters of the pure and precious material continuously.

Please don’t smoke!

Exhibition(s): 
Lendwirbel, Graz (2012)
0gms gallery, Sofia (2014)
Museumsquartier Vienna, EIKON SchAUfesnter, Vienna (2014)
Kunsthaus Graz, Landscape in Motion, Graz (2015)
Architektur Haus Kärnten, Klagenfurt (2017)

Photos: N.Lackner/UMJ