INVERTED SPECTRUM
2019
inverted watercolor paint set Horadam;
in Collaboration with Schmincke & Co.;
Provinzeditionen Berlin/Bochum
22 x 7 x 2,5 cm

Wolfgang Plöger (born 1971 in Münster, lives in Berlin) is a multimedial artist, whose works are usually conceptually primed. Plöger is known to a broad general public, above all, through his web-to-print project Google image search library. Since 2003, Plöger has assembled pictorial information into a conception with the help of the name of the relevant search machine and transmits this with no further reworking or editing into the form of printed books. This practice was a pioneering act: "Plöger is the first printed web artist", as Paul Soulellis noted (Artforum, May 2017, p. 347).

Wolfgang Plöger's edition for Provinz does not have an algorithm as the foundation of its quest for pictures, but nonetheless studies the friction between a digital regime and analogue material. The 12-color aquarelle paintbox seen here, as its name "Inverted Spectrum" reveals, presents the color-inverted version of a commercial paintbox of the Schmincke Company. During its fabrication process, the colors were inverted on the computer and the result then mixed and produced by Schmincke. To this end, along with the owl logo, directions and box, the entire receptacle was subjected to a color transformation. Plöger rendered the receptacle and the "package insert" in a silkscreen print and repainted the metal box by hand. The paint substance was single-handedly cast, dried and given a made-up nomenclature (e.g. Botsuana Regen, Köln Rosa or Kleiner Kohlweissling). This is the way that Wolfgang Plöger generates new and completely unusual color combinations: thus a multiple, which has at least a potential practical value.

(Provinzeditionen, Berlin/Bochum; 2019)