Completed
One of two additional wall paintings for the Business Academy of Aarhus has been added to the existing series of 7 wall decorations distributed all around the academy’s main building. Here is the last underlay version supporting the execution of the actual mural.
Regarding the “Embarking/Departure” motif: One has to imagine that an educational course is running out and that a whole year of young people have been given the grades and modules and skills they need. The principal takes a nap (just as it should be, now that the done is done), the French visiting professor looks on from his very own starting point and ‘Helge’ from ‘Facility’ as well, while the students with their incomparable energy head towards new horizons. A picture of the journey from educational institution on to working life, to new phases, to new chapters. Perhaps, in that sense, also a picture of the Journey of Life at all.
So. All though almost cartoonish simple in style (the whole decoration series started out back in 2018 on that premise, so we have to stick with that), this eighth decoration is actually serious – and even melancholic. The table lamps they carry on board the boats and carefully (maybe even troublesome tumbling) take care of out on the water are thought of as the emblems of the heart, the meaning, the very core, the harmony between the world and your true innermost being, the fellowship with one another, the love (if I let it run free), the magic at all - that without , nothing really matters, the light we must carry in imperative form (gentle, gentle, troublesome, beautiful, quiet, tumultuous and magnificent) through it all. Something like that.
I think it's beautiful (in the middle of the comic book aesthetic) as the boats rocking, full of zeal, sticking out towards the horizon line and eventually becoming small dots. The fragility. In my book – as stated above – almost melancholy. On the other hand, I also think that it's good that the Principal just breaks the onslaught of emotional flooding in his open camping chair (to the right). Just as I also think it's fun to see what it does to the motif when two birch trees, three students, a table lamp and a boat many times in the course of a day, and exactly in the middle of the overall motif - because they are painted on a door in the middle of the wall - goes up and in. A bit like in The Truman Show, where deep into the film it turns out that there is a door on the horizon. That you go in and out of the picture.
Wall decoration
Title: Embarking / Departure
Starring: Rector, the students and the French visiting professor as well as ‘Helge’ from ‘facility’
Size: 7.5 x 2.6 m
Location: Business Academy of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark
