At first glance, standards and art seem to be mutually exclusive, as one is considered the epitome of structure and reliability, while the other is regarded as ruleless creation. The work series DIN by Berlin-based artist Carsten Becker is an occasion to look at standardisation in technology and society and to ask about the influence of standards for the people. A selection of works by Becker was shown in February and March 2022 in the exhibition Norm in Chemnitz, Germany. Anika Reineke locates his works in the history of artistic approaches to repetition, pattern and seriality.

Conversation with curator Harald F. Theiss about Carsten Becker’s series DIN and RAL. The discussion reveals how Becker uses historical color standards and standardized industrial objects to uncover layers of function, familial resonance, and political ambiguity—from camouflage tones to everyday items with unexpected charge—and how this research culminates in his precise photographic still lives.

Carsten Becker condenses the aspects of standardization for his DIN series, in which functional and aesthetic concerns meet. Above all, two standards meet here: Becker paints DIN objects in RAL colors and photographs them. In Becker’s photographs, a strange effect presents itself: The proportions seem to change, the medium of representation pushes into the foreground and creates an alienation. The objects and the colors are removed from the sphere of use.