To show or to tell
If I had put a picture in this post it would have been of a large piece of concrete with the graffitied face of a king on it. Actually it would have been four large pieces of concrete with two kings: one smiling and the other grim and foreboding. I think it would have been an impressive photo; each piece of concrete stands about 4 meters high and is housed in an imposing glass structure inside a steel pavilion. There's no doubt as to the talent of the artist who painted the two figures; they're vibrant, colourful, evocative and engaging. But the impact these four pieces of concrete had on me had little to do with their visual appeal or their imposing size. This wasn't primarily a visual experience so much as a narrative one. What I was looking at seemed vaguely familiar and when I read the label on the glass the sharp crack of recognition took me back to Berlin in 1991 and a New Year's Eve spent amongst people celebrating the destruction of these same pieces of concrete...