Katja Davar

The Dog Walkers of Statistic Fields, 2007

Katja Davar has been working with the medium of drawing since 2005, using it to address economic matters as well. Of course for the artist this also goes hand in hand with looking at the systemic contexts relating to the functioning of the economy as such, something that finds its natural basis in resources, mineral deposits, and above all in the natural occurrence of water and oil. A good example of this is shown in the large-format drawing from the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection holdings, The Dog Walkers of Statistic Fields, 2007, a landscape view in which ‘natural’ elements can be seen alongside artificial formations that turn out to be pie charts and flow diagrams on closer examination. These show the occurrence of oil in North America and in the North Sea, starting in the 1950s and ending with their future calculated until 2020. This means that the natural landscape shown is nothing but a palimpsest of what currently holds the world together, which seems to be fuelled by the deal relating to natural resources and speculative profits from them.