Steam Burlesque

The Parisian artist Antoine Techenet alias Codex Urbanus has become famous especially for his fantastic animal creatures, which for Urban Art Biennale 2022 he is now bringing to the urban space of Völklingen—in the underpass between the World Heritage Site and the train station. In the exhibition area on the grounds of the Ironworks, by contrast, he has designed tongue-in-cheek exclusive film and theater posters for the advertising column at the bottom of the stairs to the Charging Platform. His beasts appear here as well, but the real highlight is that the star of his imaginary film and theater productions is the Völklingen Ironworks itself. In the artist’s eyes, its brutish appearance makes it the ideal venue for a horror film, which is why Völkzilla—a clear reference to the classic monster film Godzilla—is wreaking havoc among the smokestacks of Völklingen and not, like its role model, among Tokyo’s high-rises. Techenet’s gothic and steampunk socialization is crucial to the fitting optics of the spine-chilling Steam Burlesque.

No title
2022, in situ