Planes

This photographic base was shot in New York City at the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum.

Printed on Fine Art Hahnemühle Hemp Natural Line 290 g/m2.

Each print comes signed and numbered. 

Unframed. With a small white border. Send in a tube.

Print size 90 x 60 cm - Edition of 10

Print size 75 x 50 cm - Edition of 10.

Print size 45 x 30 cm - Edition of 10.

Thomas Haensgen’s Planes, from the Kinda New York series, is a carnival of contradictions. It’s an airfield - the Intrepid - where fighter planes wear their ferocious shark-like insignias, teeth bared, ready to guard against nothing more menacing than the wandering thoughts of museum-goers. Meanwhile, a small sign reading “Please Do Not Touch The Aircraft” adds a deadpan irony that grounds the entire scene in reality—just as if someone asked you not to touch the abyss at the edge of your existential crisis.

The real magic of Planes lies in its double exposure—both literal and metaphorical. The overlaid abstract fragments, resembling flurries of camouflage or digital interference, give the impression that the plane itself is dissolving into a dreamscape. It’s as if the machinery of war has been infected with the very daydreams of the visitors walking by, their glances turning a monument of power into something ephemeral, even ridiculous.

Drawing from the legacy of Dada and its irreverence for tradition, Haensgen's Planes reinterprets Duchamp’s concept of the readymade—what if the readymade didn’t just exist but wanted your attention, like the airplane threatening to bite? There’s also a nod to Surrealism, especially in its juxtaposition of the familiar with the uncanny, echoing Magritte's absurd pairings but updated for the digital age.

The piece taps into a shared memory, the oddly specific kind of frustration when your favorite seat at the coffee shop is taken, so you sit somewhere else but swear the coffee tastes worse now. Similarly, the viewer feels an absurd tension between the imposing presence of the plane and the mundanity of walking past it, like it’s just another part of a routine.

Through Planes, Haensgen critiques our desensitization to icons of power and war, rendering them both ridiculous and strangely beautiful—a balance few artists manage to achieve.