THE EXAMINATION OF THE HONORABLE JAMES WATT OR THE BLUE PISTON IS FINE / Mongi Higgs

• Size: 135 x 195 cm
• Medium: acrylic, pigments, spray and oil pastels on cotton fabric
• Sides: unpainted, with color from the creation process
• Ready to hang: No, when rolled, must be stretched by a framer / Yes, when shipped stretched on a stretcher frame
• Signature: reverse side, also signed certificate

With sharp irony and subtle physical humor, Mongi Higgs dissects the figure of the brilliant engineer James Watt in this two-part work – not as a monument, but as a human being. The title, half satire, half homage, throws the great inventor into the examination room of the present. And there he lies: the man who improved the steam engine, with an open piston and blue coloring that raises questions but poses no acute danger.

In the upper part of the picture: an abstracted profile – exhausted, gray, withdrawn into itself. Watt appears here like a ghost of himself, frozen between idea and exhaustion. The face: more thinking machine than human, the gaze empty or too full.

Below, on the other hand, the grotesque dominates: a pink body, naked, exposed, raw. In the center: the blue piston – too large, too present, almost a foreign body. This absurd overemphasis points to the technician’s obsession: that which must move, that which needs pressure, that which must always function.

Higgs poses an existential question with an ironic smile: What happens to people when they devote themselves entirely to functionality? When all life becomes a mechanism?

The color blue – otherwise a symbol of calm – has a cool, almost clinical effect here. The “blue flask” becomes a metaphor for a life in the service of progress that never presents itself for examination until it is too late.

A satirical monument full of compassion: for all those who no longer take their own temperature in their quest to change the world.

• Year: 2023
• Finish: without finish
• Shipping: rolled in the roll or on a stretcher frame in appropriate shipping packaging
• Delivery times: 8 – 14 working days (depending on size, customs formalities, etc.)
• incl. legal. VAT