Yes, this seems to be a classical painting. At first. But if you take a closer look there’s something amiss. Quite a lot, truth be told. After some scrutiny, anyone with a dime’s worth of taste can see there’s almost nothing right with this astonishing … thing. Her eyes. Her bosom. The way she touches that sexless, pot attached figurine, and the way this figurine, though sexless, somehow expectantly leans into her touch. That pot/figurine contraption as a whole is seemingly weightless. Her left forearm looks pretty disconnected, to say nothing about the ever so slightly outlandish behavior of her garment, apparently hiding Hulk Hogan’s upper arms attached to a young lady analogue, Frankenstein style. Which would come in handy in case that pot wasn’t weightless after all. The background offers equally surreal charms. Forests spontaneously dissolving into poison gas aren’t known to mankind so far, but hey, who says this scene is even supposed to have taken place on earth anyway?

I’ve seen my share of strange hotel art, but this is definitely both the most enjoyable and terrifying example I’ve come across. Ever. My love-and-hate-relationship to the genre has been brought to a totally different level by that undead lady’s gaze. The expertise in avoiding art here is nothing short of amazing. There should be meaning, but there isn’t. The pynchonian finsternis this heap of dung is imbued with would give any Max Ernst a run for its money. Whoever made this has either quite a strange sense of humor or is an alien.

And that Berlin hotel was full to the brim with garbage like that. I loved it.