If these walls could talk - oil painting - 100 x 140cm.
Detail photographs
STORY
If these walls could talk - oil painting - 100 x 140cm. - Egmont Hartwig
Of sorts, this painting functions as a vanitas where the wallpaper could be held for the object.
When painting the design of the ornate wallpaper, I found it becoming way too kitschy. I then decided to replace the pine cone in the middle of the design with a tiny alien portrait and a little UFO.
The wall is only seemingly permanent. Across the wall runs a curved crack—deliberate yet organic. It suggests structure giving way, but also something emerging. The line feels like a gesture, almost bodily, as if the wall itself is stretching or remembering.
Within these fractures lies a recurring motif: a hidden closed mouth—just enough to imply that the architecture is observing, holding onto something unsaid, a silent witness of all our goings-on. Because if these walls could talk, they wouldn’t shout.
They would wait.
As painters of realism, we are usually preoccupied with construing and constructing depth. In this painting, however, the challenge lies in the fact that the actual depth in reality consists of only a few centimeters.
detail - alien and UFO
detail - mouth