The Wish for Power 1959

Konrad Klapheck, well, he painted this office machine, The Wish for Power, in shades of dark grey and black. The subject matter here is so strange, it is almost Dada. I get a real kick out of the idea of elevating an office machine to the status of art. It feels ironic, and darkly comical. It makes me imagine what it would be like to spend hours at a time painting it. I can imagine Klapheck being really into it. Getting into the details, the repetitive parts, the surface, and the way the light hits those little buttons. There's something hypnotic about the mechanical rhythm of the keys, like some kind of weird musical instrument. And the painting itself, that muted palette and precise rendering, feels like a cross between industrial design and surrealist dreamscape. It's like he's saying, "Hey, even the most mundane objects can have a certain power, a certain beauty, if you really look at them." And that idea, that quiet subversion, feels like its own kind of revolution, a revolution of seeing.