Vittorio Brodmann, Fiona Mackay, Sophie Reinhold, Nadim Vardag, ‚Works on Paper‘, November 16, 2013 — February 1, 2014 (Berlin) Galerie Tobias Naehring

Installation view

Works on Paper

What inspired us the most in the past years, really the most, was the story about Karl Lagerfeld and the fax. That he doesn’t send emails, but constantly sketches with a marker on white paper, while babbling, eating, talking on the phone and possibly even when doing you know what, always drawing only a few lines obviously, extremely lickety-split, the way he always does it and then inserting it into a prehistoric fax machine, a late 80ies one, Panasonic possibly, with one of those diagonal copy holders. And then he faxes. And from there, on the receiving end, the world is divided into two parts: the email morons and the ones that still have a fax machine.
We could not believe that they still haven’t come up with an app, a fax app, yet. Just write down a sentence or two, do your work on paper, put your @tobias underneath it with a thick marker and fax it from your tablet or from whatever’s available. And we do not want to start with acid free or anyhow extraordinary paper, because: it is evident, that we’re using only the wickedest paper and not some, well, paper. Or did you think that Karl is using some Corporate Express or McOffice or something like that, oh come on, really, it obviously has to be wicked.
But not thermal, because Karl in any case, and everybody else might see it the same way, wants too much in his photographic works. It should all be art, best with a concept behind it, and should have good glam and Chanel and so on, and then unfortunately it is made all Hasselblad, black and white on top and that’s annoying. Especially because one knows that he’s already had it. That the work has already been concluded. And now it’s done again as a barite print, obviously with celebrities and so on, sluggish and idiotic the whole thing.
And therefore works on paper, and not for example Japan 1983, oil on canvas, or, even worse, barely Artpop or some crap like that. That, with a capital T, that was completely disgusting. Authorized-pop-representative-Sigmar-Gabriel-like. We wouldn’t be surprised if she would be walking for Chanel next year. That was one of those typical Karl things. That was a real job application. But it also depends on coming as close to the right now as possible with those papers. But not all the way to the back, rather just all fax and foxy to a certain extent, filling the paper with a time congruency directly from acting. So having the experienced time and the time in which the experienced, the thought or the heard from just now, more or less in the same instant, at least something like the moment’s horizon, on the paper. And not just 9andahalf weeks later in the studio or when you finally borrowed a light system or something like that. The whole thing is not supposed to become an archeology. But obviously equally blogged out and metered on like in „Klage“ or something like that. And the app’s name obviously has to be Karl.
Because you will only achieve this elegance of a fashion illustration on paper, this flow of the lines, you don’t even need to try on canvas, that’s like sculpturing in comparison. Other than on paper you will not get a body described. And in the end it obviously is a question of elegance, if you know what i mean. Because it should after all be elegant.

Kai Hölzner, 2013 (Translation: Felix Hesse)