Andy Campbell 2016

In 1962, Andy Warhol produced the Campbell’s soup Cans, 32 variants in all.

I saw the 32 cans in the mid nineties in the MoMA in NYC, and a couple of times afterwards.

If there is anything I share with Andy, it would definitely be the fascination towards consumer goods.

Two years ago I decided to paint a generic soup can, based on Campbell’s tomato variant.

Everything went well, except that unnecessary incident during the last night ...

One evening, after having done the last part with white paint, I put the work back into the dust-proof cabin. Big relief … it’s done!

Next morning, when checking the drying progress, I did shockingly realize that a big house spider had unfortunately entered the drying paint. The home spider was caught in the pasty paint and must have had a unsuccessful struggle in trying to get back out. It regrettably died and left quite a mess behind.

I removed the legs and all the other body parts very carefully out of the paint.

During this unusual task I did figure out how to get over this annoying event in a positive way.

Later, I decided to remove all the white paint affected by and around the «spider event».

And then, after a couple of days, when all the surrounding white paint was completely dry, I refilled the area with black paint.

And that’s why the work «Andy Campbell 2016» is not only featuring a can but also a well-placed black spot on the left side, approximately two-third above bottom!