La Dolce Vita – wall art project, Denmark – ready for the walls of Grappa, Aarhus – April 2023




This is a decoration task for a large restaurant location in Denmark. The decoration is a ten meter long 'frieze' which forms 'bottom', depth and point of view on the back wall of the restaurant's relatively vast main room.


The 'fictious' people eating and talking in the frieze's foreground mirror the actual dining guests and waiters in the 'real' premises. The overall Italian 'setting' reflects the restaurant's emphasis on Italian cuisine.


Thoughout the making of the (Italian) scene depicted on the frieze, it's been a premis to keep detailing, almost to the point where the 'fullness bursts'.

Like the 'performances', situations and incidents in the middle ground, where, among other things, the man (of the people) and his wife and her sister hold the cross in their Fiat, so that the office manager (with his aunt and her husband) in his Lancia can't possibly pass.


It is the wife in the fruit grower's coat and her sister who are struggling to get the mattress (160x200) onto the roof bars (on the Fiat).


I imagine a Fellini film.


It is not the man (who takes the tow), even though he is in his work clothes. He is too 'busy' to gesticulate in the typical way, the one with the shoulders lifted up to the level of the ears, the chin jutting forward, the corners of the mouth wide and down, and the hands with displayed, 'it's out of my hands' palms. Ché posso fare Io? And he may be right about that. The ladies get that mattress up, except that they could have used his help.


Overall, the decoration is intended as a presentation of life (as it is) in (arch)Italian widescreen.


Size: 10 x 1.3 meters.

Realized as an art work executed directly onto the wall.


Customer: Jakobsen & Co.

Location: Aarhus, Denmark



N.b. The long frieze is divided into two sections, almost two halfs, by a wardrobe element. When entering the restaurant you'll experience the frieze thoughout the entire rear wall (as pictured above), while as you are getting closer to the rear wall, you'll percept the two sections as individual pieces (see below).