Complicit

[This collection is a work-in-progres.  New works will be added regularly]

Complicit is a limited series of wood-relief prints. Each print features a single block of text in capital letters in which the buyer questions their own purchase.

The buyer completes the work

The collection's title refers to the buyer's role in the work. Unsold, these prints mean nothing. A statement like " I PAID 500 EUROS FOR THIS PIECE OF SHIT" is simply false when no one has paid anything. The text is inert. The object is worthless. Even physically, the words aren't really there—the prints are made in negative, meaning the ink covers everything except the text. The message is an absence, a blank page where the artist's hand deliberately did not go.

Only at the moment of purchase does this absence take on meaning, the text becomes true, and the work becomes art. The buyer doesn't acquire a finished piece. They complete it. The transaction is the final act of creation, the moment the print shifts from object to statement. This makes the buyer complicit—not just in the possession of the work, but in its creation. It is performance art disguised as a print on the wall, activated not by the artist but by the buyer's willingness to pay.

Process

The text is laser-engraved into birchwood blocks and inked by hand with water-based relief ink. The ink is applied in multiple colors, randomly distributed across the block, so each print has a unique color pattern. The blocks are printed on a vintage Korrex Hannover proof press on 220-gram Fabriano Rosaspina paper. The process is simple—digital production meets analog printing—entirely in the service of telling someone they wasted their money.

Tradition

The series is part of a tradition of conceptual art that implicates the market in the work's meaning. Where Duchamp submitted a urinal to question what art could be, and Banksy shredded a painting to question its value, Complicit poses a different question: what does it say about you that you bought this? The answer is right there on the wall. You've already read it. You bought it, right?

Technical details

Medium : Woodcut relief print. Laser-engraved birch wood, multi-colored water-based relief ink, hand-printed. Each print is unique.
Press : Korrex Hannover proof press (vintage cylinder press).
Paper : Fabriano Rosaspina, 220 grams, cotton printing paper.
Edition : 1–2 prints per work.