text by Lars Koepsel
For more than 20 years I come to Taiwan almost every year. It is mostly for family reasons but also to meet friends or work. Sometimes I think I'm more Taiwanese than German, nevertheless, at least in the meantime it is a mentally mixed product. I can say in full seriousness. One thing is definite, the art which I discovered here. especially the influence of abstract Chinese calligraphy on my work is as important as my occupation with philosophy during my studies in Munich.
What do I make?
I write! Better said: I copy entire books by handwriting. Since 15 years. From first up to the last word.
I select those books out of the fund, which are of interest beyond historical moments. Philosophic texts from Plato to Wittgenstein to Tschuang-Tse or Lau-Tse. I write line by line, layer by layer. Non-linear, one over the other, but with each layer the sheet is rotated 90°. So slowly an unreadable text fabric arises. Often it takes a few months to finish a piece of work. The copied book becomes a structure of depositions. A text whose meaning disappears as writing becomes an embodied drawing, a picture which has absorbed the meaning of the text but contains also the content of the text. Books become pictures!
- The mural:
The extension of the text pictures to the text on the wall in the form of a slogan may be surprising at first, but I wanted to incorporate the audience in the process of my work.
The slogan "The true friend of art is freedom" refers to a 200 year old text by Schiller, in which he demands the aesthetic state. Schiller's text was written in the days when the French Revolution was preparing to spread over Germany and the monarchy tried to secure their status quo.
I would like to ask the audience to participate and to scratch the slogan of the wall during the exhibition. The resulting abrasion and dust is collected daily in jewelry vessels which are placed on the walls of the gallery. Thus the time of the exhibition is part of the creation process which is completed by the end of the exhibition.
The writing disappears from the wall, the contents essence, remains in the vessels.
- The videos:
ZEN Camera is a conglomerate of 11 looped analog videos from 2000-2001. This work is based on the assumption that certain everyday sequences, if they are extremely slowed down, or what I did here, split up into single images with help of the remote control, brings irritating perceptions, which we usually ignore in normal everyday life as it is just too fast. Thus the viewer is able to look behind surfaces which would otherwise remain closed.
"Game Over" is a 19 min short film with soundtrack by Roman Pawollek about the game of life, which was created in 2004 for the Künstlerhaus Vienna.
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