For Luna Luna, Aratym designed an installation where visitors inserted their faces into cut-out holes, superimposing them onto the bodies of various characters.
Artist
Hubert Aratym
Attraction
Pavilion with face-in-hole paintings
Born
1926 Gutenstein, Austria - 2000 Vienna, Austria
Hubert Aratym.
Fairground view: Hubert Aratym, Pavilion with face-in-hole paintings. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, 1987.
Hubert Aratym was an Austrian painter, sculptor, stage designer, and tapestry artist who designed set pieces for Jean Genet and costumes for Circus Roncalli, a professional circus founded in 1976 by Bernhard Paul and André Heller. Aratym’s tense paintings depict anguished figures with obscured faces, whether looking away, blindfolded, or wrapped in fabric, often taking the form of triptychs that resemble altarpieces.
Hubert Aratym, Pavilion with face-in-hole-paintings, exhibited 1987.
Hubert Aratym.
For the original Luna Luna, Aratym designed an installation where visitors inserted their faces into cut-out holes, superimposing them onto the bodies of an angel, a beggar, a harlequin, a king, and a whore. The installation plays with a classic carnival attraction and invites audiences to complete his paintings with their own identities, each time transforming the work anew. René Clemencic composed original music for the installation.
Hubert Aratym, Pavilion with face-in-hole-paintings, exhibited 1987.
Hubert Aratym, Pavilion with face-in-hole paintings. Luna Luna, Hamburg, Germany, 1987.
Forgotten Fantasy
Now open at the shed, nyc
Thirty-seven years ago, Luna Luna landed in Hamburg, Germany: the world’s first art amusement park with rides, games, and attractions by visionaries like Basquiat, Haring, Lichtenstein and Hockney. By a twist of fate, the park’s treasures were soon sealed in 44 shipping containers and forgotten in Texas — until now.
