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Texts - Katharina Hinsberg
Julia Pascual - A Universe of Possible Images (back)

Katharina Hinsberg draws abstract drawings in pencil, on simple sheets of paper. And she cuts the drawings from the paper, with the aid of a scalpel. Finally she hangs the cut-outs, now ›Découpagen‹, as well as the sheets with the analogue empty spaces, as ›Zirkumstanzen‹ on the wall.

In Katharina Hinsberg's œuvre, the artistic medium of drawing is not merely a means to an end, it does not contrive anything, but develops its own aesthetic, as well as, conceptual qualities: in the sense that, drawing, beyond its evident aspects, as a medium of artistic exploration, experimentation, research and discovery, manifests more than just a line.

Whether a fleeting impression or a more intensive examination of everyday things, everything leads to graphic appropriation, for example with closed eyes, and thus to transformation: things are reinterpreted, figures undergo metamorphoses. However, the drawings are neither symbols of the perceived, nor fragments thereof, or codes: abstract, vivid, unified, but also ambiguous, their former images might possibly remain unrecognizable. When pencil is set to paper, it does not carry out a preconceived or even expected stroke, but draws the movement, which leads to the drawing.1 Therefore, the perceived, whether conscious or unconscious, regains a perpetual presence in the radically simple line on the paper.

Adhering to an extremely disciplined pattern of work, described by Katharina Hinsberg as »pace and pensum«,2 ten such drawings are created daily. This flow of images processed as such, reduced by means of graphite pencil, consolidated and alienated on paper, is stored archived, between layers of tissue paper, ready for transport in indexed boxes. However, Katharina Hinsberg's artistic work, which, in the meantime, consists of several thousand drawings, in which the biographical, artistic and historical world is reflected, continues to constantly develop and change.

For the limited period of an exhibition, individual, autonomous modules from the complete work, are taken from storage, in order to pervade a specific location, to occupy it completely, as part of an ephemeral installation. Katharina Hinsberg installs ›Découpagen‹ and ›Zikumstanzen‹ like »mobile wallpaper« in exhibition halls, without expressively considering specially inherent or formal criteria of the individual elements.

As the drawings almost seem to disappear in their singularity, amongst the apparent repetition of motives and the regular, monotonous arrangement on the walls, they possess, at the same time, the possibility to be envisaged and considered differently. Beyond the actual exhibition hall, mental images emerge from the panorama of sketched lines and their shadows, which originate »from walks through the grass, in the 92 bus into town, amongst raspberries, in the train«.3 Images, which have now become self-referential reality, which disclose imagination gaps, where not quondam things are the most essential, but those into which they can be transformed.

In the installation ›Zirkumstanzen‹, the viewer initially seeks traces of graphite pencil in vain, on the large, aluminium-laminated sheets, which are arranged in three rows, spanning the whole length of the wall, and with not much distance between them (page 9). Nevertheless, images appear on the vibrating surface: reflections of the room, of the visitor and of the light. Viewed from a distance, an all-encompassing, matt-white grid of straight horizontals and irregular crooked verticals, develops on the wall, between the gleaming metallic grey sheets.

Initially, Katharina Hinsberg copied the course of the straight-cut, machine-made edge, free-hand with a pencil, on the white reverse-side of the aluminium-laminated sheets, as a result of which, the described deviations arose. The drawn line is no longer, in the centre of the sheet, but is now only a peripheral drawing. The knife no longer cuts around it, but into it: by laying two sheets over one another, so that their edges overlap slightly and then the course of the resulting line is cut along.

The principle of repetition or duplication is continued from a project ›nulla dies sine linea‹ from 1999 (page 10). It dealt with a paper cube, which consisted of 921 single sheets. The sheet at the very bottom divided by an initial line in Indian ink, drawn with a ruler. Then a second sheet was placed on top of the first, and the first line, still visible through the thin paper, was copied free-hand. Katharina Hinsberg repeated this step altogether 920 times, with the deviations from the original line becoming greater and greater and visible on the front- and backsides of the cube. As the two-dimensional line was copied, it simultaneously created an individual line, on the three-dimensional cube.

In ›Zirkumstanzen‹, the copied line exists only as a cut edge, along which, the single sheets on the wall are laid. The original pencil drawing is thus, unrecognizable. The previous pencil line no longer defines the final drawing, but rather its disappearance and the resulting void, the white line, which appears between the cut papers, on the wall of the exhibition hall. The image within the image, appears only when the scalpel has defined its outline, has cut it out. It is disembodied, to become present.

The wall is a place of inception, before it becomes the site of the exhibition: black becomes white, shadow becomes light, negative becomes positive, boundaries depict images, copy becomes original, outline has an artistic effect – presence is possible only through absence.

The »reciprocal fusion of location and work«, always initiated by Katharina Hinsberg, reveals itself in these gaps between the sheets, in an astonishingly matter of course manner. The absence of the original drawing is necessary, in order to be able to perceive the proximity of the given room, to define it: in the space of the image, which develops in the line between the sheet and the wall. Drawing and wall, work and location, converge.

The »fragmented membranes« in ›Zirkumstanzen‹, hanging edge to edge, all over the walls, veil the room, as they unveil it at the voids. On the one hand, this veil neutralises the premises. Its features and asperity disappear behind the sheets, hanging like »rippling scales« on the wall. On the other hand, room structures such as pillars, landings, and lighting are exposed by the reflections in a distinctive manner. Structures, such as skylights or floor tiles, can be found reflected on the wall, in a transferred sense. Irrespective of this, further images may potentially appear on the quicksilver-like surface. The determination of a moment: links between the existing and the fictional; expressions of tension between the real and the imaginary. The principles of drawing.

In the 19th century, Charles Baudelaire wrote that all good and true drawers, work according to the images in their heads and not according to nature.4 Whether images, reproductions or afterimages of previous observations and recollections of Katharina Hinsberg, beyond their immediate impressions, other distinctive mental images appear in our imagination: a universe of possible images.

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1 Quoted from Katharina Hinsberg in the catalogue ›Découpagen‹, Edition Solitude 1996. 2 Katharina Hinsberg, quoted from Edition ›45 motive zu blättern‹, Radolfzell 1998. 3 Katharina Hinsberg, quoted from the catalogue ›Découpagen‹, Edition Solitude 1996. 4 Charles Baudelaire: ›Aufsätze zu Literatur und Kunst‹, München and Wien, 1989. All further quotations of the artist originate from discussions or the project description on the exhibition in the Kunstverein Freiburg.


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