Austrian artist Marko Lulic (*1972) employs the Kunst Halle Frieze area almost as a wall poster for a statement: "Was die Russische Revolution nicht geschafft hat, die Paarbeziehung zu zerstören, wird demnächst den Billigfliegern gelingen!“ (What the Russian revolution did not accomplish – the destruction of the loving couple relationship– the cheap-flight companies will achieve!) This remark roams over the 30 meters of the frieze-strip, twisted into perspective, on a background of intense colours including blue, orange and black. Despite using a very simple design, a well-known standard font and basic hues, the slogan grabs one's eye powerfully. By doing so, Lulic cleverly activates the tools of contemporary advertising. The background plays with explosion-like forms, especially through its diagonal design. The letters seem to "fly", defying gravity, through the colour shapes, while the colour fields themselves crisscross their territories. Several of the background forms can be recognized as cut-outs made from stars.
Lulic creates an area of conflict between the two reference points of the work: on one hand “Russian Revolution“, on the other hand “To Travel By Plane Is An Option For Everyone“. The fact that the propaganda machine of advertisement, with its obsession for dynamic diagonal forms, finally accepts the aesthetic inheritance of the Russian revolution may be astonishing at first glance. At the beginning of the 20th century, groundbreaking techniques of designing images were developed in the former Soviet Union. These were used systematically within their propaganda for a communist utopia.
Does the promise, given by the cheap flight companies, that the dream of flying will become affordable for everyone, turn out to be the realisation of an idea originally communist in origin? Cheap flight companies as well as the Russian Revolution appear to form an enigmatic couple avoiding definite interpretations. The Kunst Halle frieze with its condition as an interface between the interior and exterior, between art space and public city space, is the ideal location for Lulic's discourse dealing with ideology and society, economy and rhetoric. As a “showcase“ visible to the public, each work of art for the frieze wall area has a placard-like effect. Since the mid-nineties, Marko Lulic has worked intensively on the subject of the conception of self in public and in society, primarily using text and architecture. Raised in former Yugoslavia and in Austria, he is knowledgeable about both the tradition-bound Austrian environment and the utopian socialist dreams of former Yugoslavia.