Marks | 2011

Acrylic, MDF, red LEDs, electrical wires, gold mylar sheet

Headquarters of French Communist Party, 2, Place du Colonel Fabien, Paris (2011) ; K21, Dusseldorf, Germany (2018)

Marks offer a luminous typographic annotation to the political imagination. The illuminated shapes produced by the array of red light bulbs suggest an arresting configuration of orthographic devices – a question mark and an exclamation sign – that couple to form an echo of the hammer & sickle sign. The work bathes the entrance to the foyer in red light, and finds itself reflected on many of the surfaces that surround it. By having questions marks and exclaimation marks perform the hammer & sickle sign, ‘Marks’ (a play on the name ‘Marx’) reiterates and celebrates the legacy of asking questions and articulating deeply felt human desires.