Copy the Line

July 9 to September 4, 2020
Open by Appointment
Potsdamer Str. 97, 10785 Berlin

Group exhibition with Vito Acconci, Teresa Burga, Hanne Darboven, Nadira Husain, Agnes Martin, Anna Oppermann, Pablo Picasso, Ed Ruscha, Bridget Riley, Robin Rhode, Fred Sandback, Lawrence Weiner, Stanley Whitney and Jorinde Voigt

 

When Agnes Martin disappeared 1967 from the New York scene, she presumably followed the wandering space, that clearly appears in her drawings. In the 1960s her name was already known. Though, after a series of unfortunate events combined with her dedication to art, she packed her bags one day and left. Only her artworks might give us an idea what happened after her disappearance – geometrical grids, seemingly fleeting and monotonous, that move us to look closer and thus take their versatile effect.

Drawing, as arranging lines on paper, can easily be understood as a draft. A sketch, waiting for its realization in a different medium. But what happens, if the drawing refuses to take that step, instead lingers and further merges every urge for completion and quick gesture? It starts to wander.

By roaming through the current exhibition at Klosterfelde Edition, we encounter drawings in different stages; as visualization of time, the materialization of a process, or as levels of transformation. The drawings oppose their usual understanding as being incomplete, while residing as an open factor in the artworks.

No matter how many stages of transformation the drawing is going through, it always refers to something prior, beyond or next to it, and therefore to itself. Accompanying it is like wandering aimlessly – every graphic decision much more vibrant. It undermines the idea of the magnum opus, the grand finale. Agnes Martin surfaced in New Mexico 18 months after her disappearance. One can only guess, that this was just the beginning of another story.

Text by Elisa Maria Schmitt