In an empty space in Berlin’s Neukölln Arcaden, a shopping mall plagued by persistent vacancies, a headless and armless torso—readable as male—is monumentally constructed atop a stack of styrofoam boxes on a glowing pedestal. Stuck in its chest is a price tag with a barcode and the words “Daffodils (they are called Narcisses in German) €0.69.” Two of the Styrofoam boxes bear the inscription “aura freshday”—a tongue-in-cheek nod to Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the aura in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935). 

If this monument to transience had a head and eyes, it would be looking at a wall filled with over 70 stacked plastic crates from the produce market, each filled with plastic packaging—some of it painted—and other remnants of our disposable society. 

Upon closer inspection, one can discover pairs of eyes, faces, and creatures in these boxes, and sometimes even situations and possible stories. Endlessly reproducible plastic packaging is the end product of the fossilized remains of former life. They are reanimated through painting and assemblages, through the artist’s imagination, and also through the attention of the viewer — some mentioned an aura of aliveness.

To the side, a compilation of videos recounts the moving history of the packagings and showcases in the department store window at the corner of Donau and Ganghofer Straße, just nearby, ten years earlier.