At the tail end of winter in early 2009, Klaus Weber delivered a quantity of small- and medium-format primed and varnished white canvases to a bee-keeper’s grounds in Berlin. He spread them around the yard, propping some up against bushes or beehives, standing others on wooden easels, and waited for the painting process to begin. After some time the bees, which had stayed in the hives throughout the cold winter months, emerged to begin their annual ‘cleansing flight’ during which they expel the contents of their digestive systems. Weber’s plan was to exploit the fact that bees tend to choose clean white surfaces as the repositories of their seasonal expulsions – usually fresh laundry, cars or white-painted buildings. Offered the ready-prepared white canvases, the bees complied, spattering them with golden-brown residual matter in a satisfyingly ‘all-over’ manner.
Klaus Weber
