This playful collaborative work was part of an exhibition of works by Wellington-based and internationally celebrated jeweller Karl Fritsch and Auckland-based photographer and filmmaker Gavin Hipkins.

The German word Tiefenglanz translates roughly as 'deep gloss' and it is the related exploration of surface qualities and illusions of depth that is central to Fritsch and Hipkins' ongoing collaborative project. Using black and white analogue printing techniques, Hipkins hand prints images from his archive of negatives amassed over two decades of photography. These prints are then forwarded to Fritsch for embellishment, scarring and rupture.

This process of one artist forwarding incomplete work to another, calls on the Surrealist game ‘the exquisite corpse’ (cadavre exquis) in which strange amalgams of pictures unfold in the hands of its different creators. With Fritsch and Hipkins, however, the game extends beyond drawing to their own kind of material assemblage.