The installation “Characters at War” (2004) enabled visitors to meet the elite of international character design literally eye-to-eye. From Super Mario to Emily the Strange: Hundreds of all time favourites and shiny newcomers from the flat-faced world of character design, comics, graffiti and merchandising are pushing through to the third dimension!
The loveliest, cutest, and strangest characters stand tall as life-size cardboard stand-up soldiers arranged in a gigantic battlefield installation. Behind the foot soldiers of this enormous anthropomorphic army are none other than the heroes of the international design scene.
Characters at War has toured excessively around the globe, and has been installed in the Zentralbüro, Berlin and the Forum-NRW, Düsseldorf (GER), at the Space4 Gallery in Peterborough (UK), at the Secca in Winston-Salem (USA) and the California State Univeristy Long Beach Art Museum in Los Angeles (USA).
Artists participating in the installation include Snowcat, Fawn Gehweiler, Buero Destruct, Furi Furi, Francois Chalet, ESM artificial, ACNE, James Marschall aka Dalek, Phunk Studio, ShagArt, Mari-chan, Unit9, Jim Avignon, Genevieve Gaukler, Boris Hoppek, FriendsWithYou, Tim Biskup, Flying Fortress, Doma Collective, Love Ablan, and many, many more…
