DUTY FREE, Tegel Airport (2025)

Duty Free, 2024

… but first, save lives

Text & curation Anika Meier

Joachim Bosse is getting serious. Gone are the days of nostalgic reveling in the past and feeling good about consumption. He has found love and has come to inner peace. But the world around him is in turmoil, it's a time of tumult. And something is at stake. For Bosse. For you. For all of us. Attention and empathy can save society and lives.

At Tegel Airport, the German conceptual artist Joachim Bosse presents thirteen large-format paintings exclusively for one evening. With his new cycle of works IN CASE OF, he becomes contemplative. He reads the signs of the times. "Humanity seems to be prepared for everything. Except for itself," he says. Bosse has traveled a lot, he has spent time in the big city and in nature. As an attentive observer, he has encountered seemingly naive graphics on signs everywhere that accompany people through life and constantly prepare them for the worst: catastrophe. Forest fires, shark attacks, plane crashes, floods, and much more.

Bosse has now done what one should never do: He pocketed the flight safety graphics on the plane. Back home, he meticulously and accurately transferred the flight safety graphics onto canvas in color.

For Bosse, the flight is a metaphor for order, orientation, and structure in the face of catastrophe. With each flight, there seems to be a threat of crashing from the highest heights to the deepest depths. In her novel "Outline," Rachel Cusk wonders why passengers don't flee while the plane is still on the ground. Because on every flight, we are reminded of how quickly everything can be over and how important it is to be informed and prepared, to listen and to act. When danger threatens, it threatens everyone. A life-threatening event knows no class distinctions. Flight attendants warn on every flight to think of yourself first, so that you are even able to help others. Without oxygen, no energy. And so it is everywhere outside of airplanes.

We can make it. Together. Into the boats and row.