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Have you ever touched a marble surface that instead turned out to be linoleum? Or shifted a chest of drawers that surprisingly didn’t weigh dozens of kilograms because it was made of cardboard, not wood? Of course, we can’t afford furniture, floor materials or garments made of only natural precious materials. Then again, the rather pricy designer items too are often made of cheap plastic or wood chips, which are at best covered with a veneer of precious material – but mostly with a cheap imitation. All right, let it be: if the shape and size of the item fit, it doesn’t really matter what exactly it is made of. But somewhere at the back of your mind you still know that the floor of your hallway is not real marble or your chest of drawers isn’t made of solid oak.

The artists have erected a house in the middle of the gallery space and covered its walls with a wallpaper designed by Benjamin Badock. It features a brick pattern combined with wood grain, thus bringing together two so-called “genuine” materials, which you may not even find in some new buildings. Stone walls are known to be strong and soundproof; wood, on the other hand, is warm and environmentally friendly. However, the facades and interior walls of new buildings are often covered with an imitation of either of these materials. Badock gives an additional twist to such imitations: Is this wall made of laminated building boards? Wooden bricks? Plywood boards with engraved pattern? In any case, it makes a fitting background to his portraits: a superficial design for superficial people.