Piet Wessing, Dealey Plaza, 1999
Dealey Plaza, a work by Piet Wessing comprised of 28 colour photographs, presents well-known images and video stills of the Kennedy assassination. Chronologically arranged in four rows, these visual materials are overlaid with opaque surfaces that have missing horizontal and vertical sections, simultaneously obscuring some and revealing other parts of the photographs. This overlaying by Wessing prompts viewers to question not only what they are seeing, but also what they know about the assassination of the 35th president of the United States.
Accompanied by a small manual that outlines the shooting of Kennedy and evidence that points towards a conspiracy, Dealey Plaza is part of a larger body of work that includes installations in public spaces, email projects, soundtracks, and fictional movies titled Conspiracy Project I + II, which the artist completed between 1999 and 2005.
Both the photographic series and its manual belong in the Stiftung Reinbeckhallen’s collection and can be viewed in Haus 17 until the end of 2024. For more information, please visit our program page.
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Piet Wessing (*1961 in Germany) studied photography under Arno Jansen at the Fachhochschule Köln between 1986 and 1991 before receiving a post-graduate degree in media art from the Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln in 1995. He has been working across media since the mid-1990s and has exhibited his work in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Europe.