KUB Billboards
Helmut King
29 | 01 – 25 | 03 | 2007
The Vorarlberg artist Helmut King, born in 1950, selected six of his Cigarette Box People for the KUB Billboards. The original sculptures, which are approx. 80 cm tall, were photographed matter-of-factly from the front and enlarged to a height of three meters, so that along the Seestraße they now appear as a row of false gods blankly staring at the passers-by. On their development the artist writes, “The Cigarette Box People wanted to grow, not just in number – after all, 120 have been created in the course of 13 years – but also in height and width. I was inspired by the clever lines that the EU emblazons on packaging, there had to be more than one on each paper sculpture, slightly altered, of course. The large-scale Cigarette Box People, some of them looking Aztec, others robot-like, speak in different tongues. And it was possible to put more everyday material into the works: cigarette boxes, bottle caps, champagne corks, matchboxes, and beer cans. Drinking and smoking go hand in hand and when officialdom implements new labels on bottles and cans, this will lead to a new generation of figures.”