MIKE NELSON
CLOAK

Edited by Mira Dimitrova
Published by NERO
168 pages
17 x 22,5 cm
Hardcover
ISBN: 978-88-97503-91-0

Price: 118 lei


Cloak is a total-blue book which documents a site-specific intervention by Mike Nelson in the UBS building in Monaco. The artist has painted every single room and detail of the building with a pigment called ultramarine blue, extracted from the precious lapislazzuli—originally from the Middle East, and more expensive than gold. The distorted and suffocating reality of the cloak envelops the spectator in the seven floors of the building.

Ultramarine blue references a rare commodity, and exists in the world of luxury goods. Along with its associated ideas of value and currency, the Eastern source of this colour’s historical extraction further reverberates—uncomfortably—with current world events.

The book is printed with a custom offset plates separation (cyan+black+reflex blue) that translates the ultramarine blue used by the artist in the installation.