(Dortmund 1953–1997 Vienna)
Untitled, 1987, monogrammed M. K. serveral times in two blocks, collage, acrylic on cardboard, caution tape, felt-tip pen on yellow coloured Plexiglas on wood, 73.5 x 35.6 cm (Plexiglas), 84.4 x 45.5 cm, framed

Certificate:
Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne November 2014

Provenance:
Meuser, Essen
Private Collection, Germany

Martin Kippenberger deliberately chose the warning colours of yellow, black and red for his work to raise awareness with this piece depicting the tanker accident on 11 July 1978 in Los Alfaques, near Tarragona.
A tanker carrying 23 tonnes of propane exploded at lunchtime near the Los Alfaques campsite, destroying an area of 40 x 60 metres. The camping gas stoves at the campsite immediately burst into flames and also exploded. The accident claimed 217 lives, and more than 400 campsite visitors were injured, some gravely. Martin Kippenberger uses every MK spanning two blocks to emphasise the high number of victims, by symmetrically repeating his monogram MK.
In the white and red rectangle in the lower portion of the work, Martin Kippenberger symbolically reproduces the explosion and the size of the area which was destroyed. The grid of the campsite is overlapped with various reddish shades applied using the impasto technique, reflecting the enormous power of the explosion.
Martin Kippenberger had I hold myself closed – Yo me Mantengo Aislado printed on the original police tape. In the late 1980s, he uses this statement to refer to humanity’s complete inability to undertake social interactions, and references Germans’ obsession with privately reserving their space with a towel.