City SLicker

Original digital-to-physical · Aluminum composite panel (Dibond), UV ink, high-gloss automotive clear coat

$15,400

Table lamp light at 9pm is when this work opens., the gold in this work advances and the blacks recede until the cityscape feels less like a painting and more like a window. Not a window onto Panama specifically, but onto the version of any city you have moved through at night and seen someone who clearly belonged there when you did not. The work intensifies as the room darkens around it.

No payment now — the artist will contact you personally.

Details

Dimensions

123 × 164 cm

Weight

6 kg

Subject matter

Panama old city at night, asphalt street detail

Medium

Aluminum composite panel (Dibond), UV ink, high-gloss automotive clear coat

Suited for

BedroomLiving roomOfficeHallway

Fire rated: D-s2,d0

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From the studio

“We arrived in Panama and I told the taxi driver to take us to the old city. On the way there, through the window, I saw a lone city slicker. He was just standing on a corner in the way you see in a movie, like the street was built specifically for them to stand on it. The old city was twenty minutes away but that figure was the image that stayed. The work is not a painting of Panama. It is a painting of that corner, and whoever was on it, and the certainty in how they occupied it. The title came first.”

vonMoerenburgh

Living with this work

The first thing most collectors notice is the surface quality: the depth of the blacks and the way the gold shifts under movement. After a few weeks the work settles into the room and the second thing becomes visible, which is that it reads entirely differently in the morning than at night. Morning light reveals the architectural structure. Evening light reveals the atmosphere. Collectors who have lived with nocturnal works report that they become more useful over time, not less: the evening reading changes with mood in a way a daylight piece does not.

Where it lives

Room by room: where this work thrives, where it struggles, and exactly where to hang it.

Room fit

This is a work for artificial light. It was made in response to a city seen at night and it performs best in the conditions it was made from: table lamps, warm-spectrum overhead light, the kind of light that pools rather than floods. A room that receives strong natural light during the day will give a cooler, more architectural reading of the piece, which is valid but secondary. Position at 145 cm to center on a wall that does not receive direct sunlight. The gold register will intensify as the room darkens around it. It is best seen last, after everything else in the room has gone quiet.

Strong fit

The strongest domestic placement for this work. A bedroom with warm artificial lighting in the evening gives the gold register its full range. Position it on the wall you face from the bed rather than behind it, so the viewing distance allows the composition to read as cityscape rather than texture. As the room light dims the work becomes more atmospheric and the implied figure more present.

Work size123 x 164 cm

Hang height (center)145 cm

Wall coverageFeature wall anchor

Ideal viewing distance1.5 - 3 m

About the artist

vonMoerenburgh

The Hague, The Netherlands

48,000 miles. Panama to New Zealand, Brazil to Hawaii. vonMoerenburgh was crossing the Pacific, then crossing it again, from a different angle. The ocean kept finding him. Eventually, he stopped leaving.

He came to art late. Thirty years in design, gaming, and publishing, then at 49, he started making art. The work is built on a digital foundation, finished by hand with crystal glass pigments that shift with the light. The same surface reads differently depending on where you stand and what the light is doing.

He always meant to go to art school. This is what happened instead.