AES+F BANNER STOLEN FROM WITTE DE WITH CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART
A huge banner by the Russian art collective AES+F was stolen last week when technicians at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art in Rotterdam removed the work from the building facade, according to the Art Newspaper. Part of the piece, which was wrapped around the front and side of the venue, was taken from the pavement outside the center.
Anne-Claire Schmitz, curatorial assistant on the project, told the Art Newspaper: “We took the banner down and only left it on the street for five minutes. It weighs over two hundred pounds, which leads us to believe that this is an organized heist, possibly even some kind of artist performance.” The main front section of the mammoth piece, which measures over ninety feet by thirty feet, was stolen, while the side part made it to storage.
Schmitz added that the installation was uninsured because even though “AES+F’s intervention is a work of art, the banner itself has no value on the art market; it was indeed supposed to be destroyed after taking it down.” She also denied claims in the local press that the theft was a publicity stunt.
Evgeny Svyatsky of AES+F said that he was “surprised” at the turn of events, adding that “it is difficult to imagine how [the robbers] will use the piece,” agreeing that the work has “no commercial value.”
The banner depicts a scene from the collective’s 2009 video installation, The Feast of Trimalchio, which updates the story of the Roman plutocrat Trimalchio from Petronius’s novel Satyricon. The highly stylized work shows masters and servants indulging themselves to a pulsating classical sound track at a modern-day luxury hotel.
The AES+F installation formed part of the institution’s ten-month project focusing on “Morality”; a piece by German artist Isa Genzken was being hung on the facade when the banner was snatched.
