€29,00
In his first monographic publication, a consistently conceived and designed artist's book, Matthias Aschauer draws a picture of Albania as if in passing, using the means of selective perception. He starts from the observation that the Mercedes car brand has an unusually high degree of distribution in the country and takes the cars - objets trouvés in the best sense - as a design principle for his pictures and as a continuous narrative pattern for the book. We see a fascinating country in transition to a market economy, with Mercedes cars in every picture, but it is clear that the Mercedes star shines as a symbol and promise of the better life not only in Albania. For enthusiasts and connoisseurs, the book is also an opportunity to see the Mercedes types and model series of the last 40 years, meticulously listed in the picture titles, highly concentrated in exotic everyday situations. David Staretz, Austria's most gifted author of everything spiritual and material about cars, steers his text into the depths of the Mercedes myth.
Matthias Aschauer, * 1984 in Vöcklabruck. Lives and works in Vienna.
