oa krimmel [oak] - SCULPTURE

OAK, »HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN [Walther PPK_nitted]«, Mixed Media, 2025

White album · American gun magazine · John Lennon · Walther PPK

OAK, »Extinction to Go / The [Nuclear] Football«, 2024/25 , Mixed Media

Laser-Stereolithography, Photopolymer handpainted, 499,77mm x 439,31mm x 292,12mm (Ph. Igor Panitz)

LUDWIG GIES PRIZE FOR SCULPTURE 2025 · Awarded by LETTER Stiftung Cologne

»The potentially most dangerous object on our planet. Officially referred to as the „Presidential Emergency Satchel,“ this atomic briefcase enables the President of the United States to authorize a nuclear strike. It allows for the launch of individual strategic missiles or even a global nuclear attack. In American parlance, this powerful case is euphemistically called „The [Nuclear] Football.“

Since the 1960s, this bulging leather briefcase has always remained close to the president >never more than an arm‘s length away< under the watchful eye of a specially assigned military aide. A briefcase as a symbol of power and global deterrence, balancing politics and responsibility >>> “The Football“ is by no means just a piece of luggage but rather the control unit for a potential worldwide nuclear Armageddon, ultimately dependent on the decision of a single individual.

The work transforms this historical object into a surreal monument of responsibility and delirium. 3D-printed in polished material, it retains the sleek design language of authority and control, yet reveals its true anatomy: beneath the smooth surface lies a morphing “football” whose form echoes a human skull, its veins and cranial lines visible like a map of concealed catastrophe. The object becomes a reliquary of extinction >>> a portable altar for the end of civilization, always ready for transport, always beside the throne.

The sculpture is not an accusation but an unveiling. It materializes the latent violence of political aesthetics, the way power disguises annihilation as efficiency, and apocalypse as protocol. Extinction to Go is both artifact and omen: a product of the digital age and a prophecy from within it.

By turning the “football” into a skull, the work inverts the myth of heroic leadership. It reveals that beneath the polished symbols of governance lies the most fragile and terrifying truth of all >>> that the end of the world has long been held in human hands.

OA Krimmel: »Extinction to Go is a survival kit for the end of reason. A briefcase built for collapse >>> polished, portable, and perfectly absurd >>> it mirrors the human instinct to aestheticize disaster, to package entropy as useful luggage, and to carry annihilation as baggage.

My work traces the afterlife of progress. It observes how civilizations fossilize themselves through objects >>> how the very materials of modernity, from aluminum to code, form the sediment of a future archaeology. Extinction to Go belongs to that layer: a capsule from a culture that believed overkill nuclear power could outpace consequence.

I am drawn to the fault lines where technology becomes myth, and function turns to relic. In my practice, light behaves like residue, color like radiation. The materials are not chosen for beauty but for their half-life >>> their refusal to die quietly.

Extinction to Go condenses my entire practice into one gesture: an act of witness within a planetary twilight. It treats extinction not as an ending but as a medium >>> the atmosphere through which new forms, new myths, and hopefully a final clarity will emerge.«

OAK, »THE ARK (STRANDED)«, Aasee&Aueteich, 2025-2027, Lightweight concrete, Mixed Media

project for dK and SM 2027

Noah's Ark · Trip to Mars · Origami · An impossibility · Survival · Rock algae

OAK, »LIEBESMÜH/CAROUSEL (DETAIL)«, 2024/2274, Mixed Media

OAK, »LIEBESMÜH/CAROUSEL«, 2024/2274, Mixed Media

Logan’s Run (1976) · Future of 2274 · Eternal youth · Crystal myth / meth · The Circle

OAK, »Rider, Blue (Wassily Hog)«, Polycarbonat, 2000x790x1220cm, 2024

Cover becoming form · Concealment as revelation · Arte-Fact · Roman Holiday

OAK, »What The Shit Is Going On? [6.8.1945 // 3.9.2017]«, Mixed Media, 2024

Fat Man · Little Boy · Since 1945 how many nuclear tests carried out? [2.000!]

OAK, »TEA PARTY« (Blue Swords on white gold), Mixed Media, 2025, 80 x 70 x 45 cm

Fragile · Game of Drones ·

OAK, »somewHERE«, (ON-Schaltung), Neon-Installation, 2015/2017

OAK, »nowHERE«, vierfach alternierende Schaltung (NO/NOW/HERE/NOWHERE), Neon-Installation, 2015/2023

OAK, »somewHERE«, (ON-Schaltung), Neon-Installation, 2015/2023

OAK, »My Last Cigarette (Definitely Maybe)«, 3D Print, Objektkasten 20x20cm, 2020

OAK, »Become the one you want to be«, 3D Print, Installation, 2022

OAK, »Memento Mori (Final Stage)«, 3D Print, Objektkasten 20 x 20cm, 2019

OAK, »Brain Enlarger«, (studio view), Ureol/MdF, 1996, 36x47x36 cm

Sculpture for Debut-Expo "Inhale – Exhale", State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart

OAK, »ZebraTower«, Kaltplastik, 15x5m, 2026

The world's first TV tower. 70th anniversary.