here's how fabian oefner tricked us into believing these photos were really shot by a gun

we are not looking at perfectly timed photographs. gunshots did not shred the images into thousands of pieces. instead, the kinetic energy of these little fragments is an illusion, and with this illusion, fabian oefner has proved himself to be one of the quintessential artists alive today, dedicated to the art of preciseness. oefner did not project an object of any kind through kafka, or warhol, or any of these artists’ photos. so then, they are photoshopped. no. to pull-off this reality-exploding series, fabian oefner did something sublime. 

all images courtesy of fabian oefner

while most photographs exist today in a digital realm, oefner’s ‘exploding collages’ re-introduce us to the photograph in abstract, as a physical object in tangible space. something we can literally hold, something we can display with value. in this case: pieces we can attempt to hold in our palms. the art of illusion is one that requires immense time and precision — sometimes, the most miraculous and fooling of tricks is so, because it isn’t a trick at all. for this one, oefner simply, diligently, cut infinitesimal piece after infinitesimal piece, meticulously rearranged thousands of them in such a way, then photographed them.