retour
By Joséphine Kaeppelin we display two engraved aluminium plates and other works on paper from one of her conceptual frameworks, which involves a common word processor software as production tool. In the aluminium works, the program is used to write an abstract text, but the ordinary writing purpose is entirely abandoned as the subject turns from text into drawing. Under the artist’s visual supervision, the letter „l” is organised digitally, in both standard and cursive font and spaced out with blanks. This pattern is then actually engraved on the aluminium plates. In these works, as well as in her other works on paper, the artist investigates the possibility to overcome the limits of predefined purpose-orientation of the software. As she says:
“Using it (the software) for me, it is a way of finding a space of humanity and freedom in such an organized and predefined environment made to be efficient. Taking time not to be productive but sensitive with a common tool... I divert the purpose of the software - a kind of resistance to speed, efficiency, and nowadays programmed world.”
The works on DIN A4 paper are unique, and no digital data exists. The artist layers ideas on top of each other like colour areas, lines, diagrams, words and arrows by using the same paper repeatedly for the printer. In between hand-made notes, crosses, arrows or words are added like commends or quotes. The papers partially remind of forms, prescriptions, systems, analysis or projections, but transcend these frames of meaning through the unconventional disposal and usage of its elements.
Andreas Greusslich
Press release, exhibition GC_Watch_List, Joséphine Kaeppelin + Zach Trow, Greusslich Contemporary, Berlin, september 2013