*The Poppy Field Infiltrates the Marking ERROR*
The four parts of the piece can be put together in 17 possible ways, from which seven two-part, six threepart
and two four-part combinations may result. Starting point for the divisibility of the piece is the
joint distinctly separating the two parallel wall surfaces on the first two tableaus. Since the common
vanishing point is located precisely on the interstice between them, there is no visible foreshortening
where the walls stand out against each other. In this vertical fissure between the tableaus, the horizontal
joints within the wall structure collide in such a distorted manner, that one assumes the wall to be uniform
and the continuity of the wall structure is disrupted merely by a missing middle piece in its depiction.
Only the boat, in an upright yet upside-down position, links one half of the composition with the
other, and is therefore really/technically divided—as is the whole surface of the composition. Due to its
divisibility, it is the only element that establishes a link to part three: The eye wanders through the crack
into a room, which is located either between wooden paneling, wall planes, pictorial compositional levels,
or behind. Both the vanishing point and the overturned boat have been doubled. Since the division
line is employed as a means of achieving a multiplicity of views, it endows the simple line within an illusionistic
system, with spatial depth as the proximity increases. This manifests itself at first in a sewage
ditch, located at the foot of a closed wall front, and then appears in part four as a ravine, dividing the
whole mainland. The now visible horizon, as the only significant horizontal line, constitutes the breadth
of the frame, which encloses the broken-off architectural elements on the right and left side around a
scene that could be extended indefinitely as a loop by way of combining copies of all four parts of the
piece. Since the differentiated walls are located on different parts of a landscape, the left and right sides
(parts one and two) of the original wall surface become interchangeable and finally the first, unclear
joint breaks down into the two outside edges of a randomly limited landscape. The question, however, of
whether something of this kind ultimately does or does not happen, remains open.
In order for the cultivation of poppies to remain undiscovered by infiltrators of the drug trade,
the young farmer couple camouflages themselves and carries out diversionary actions: they spill wine on
eroded fields, cool off in the sun and sun themselves under temporary roofs. As the man stands under
the shower fully clothed, his floating bride fastens the very clothes he is wearing to the clothesline: as
water drops change into grains of sand, the impossible simultaneity leads to the equivocal assumption
that the decisive moment of unclothing has been skipped. It was used to place the poppy field in what
is currently the most disputed border region, so that the latter is conserved for drug production only
because bigger complications such as wars between neighboring states are to be prevented. Yet as soon as
the issue concerning borders can be resolved and the conflicting parties are able to agree on a common
way of combating the evil, the field will be transferred to another region and the story begins anew.
Halcyon Days, Cologne 2013, p. 384