Artist’s stunning blown-apart Audi R8 is like an exploded-view blueprint on steroids
If you’ve ever wondered what the rear of an Audi R8 would look like if it exploded with magnificent precision, wonder no longer. Like a blown-apart blueprint diagram, this unbelievable image created by Swiss artist Fabian Oefner showcases the extraordinary detail and engineering of a supercar. And even if the moment is something the artist creates, its hyper- accuracy and clarity shows us a shade of reality we’d never see in real life.
Oefner has been working on his “Disintegrating” series since 2013, deconstructing scale models of vintage cars and taking thousands of photographs to assemble with Photoshop into one coherent moment. In this case, though, Audi offered to take apart an R8 for real, in order to celebrate a decade of the mid-engine supercar’s majestic V-10 engine.
“When you go from model cars to real cars, the challenge, of course, is that you’re literally working on a way bigger scale,” Oefner says. “The beauty with real cars is that it’s an experience, and you discover so much more about the car. But also just being in a space, being in a workshop, you smell the petrol in the air. The piece really comes alive.”
For the type of people who love to take things apart just to see how they work, Oefner’s R8 image is something that you could stare at for hours.
“Even the mechanics sometimes told me, ‘We’ve never actually seen inside the transmission or looked inside into the A/C compressor unit, because normally when something goes wrong with a part like that we just exchange the whole part,’” Oefner says.
The R8 was evidently used as a prototype during hot-weather stress tests, because a lot of the parts were still sandy and dirt-covered. For Oefner that’s even better, because it shows a bit of honest real-world wear and patina.
For more of the “Disintegrating” series, head to fabianoefner.com. There you’ll find some exceptional visuals, including an Auto Union Type C, Bugatti 57C, Porsche 956, Maserati 205F, and Ford GT40.
