5.
FROM ME TO YOU AND BACK
Graphic work pressure between tradition and actuality - an exhibition
of artists from Liverpool and Cologne
The "Eight Days a Week" led Neil Morris, head of the printmaking
department of the Liverpool John Moores University, and the operator
of the Cologne graphics workshop Jutta Vollmer and Andreas Vietz together
years ago. The artists understood at once, but the artistic printmaking
is a medium that is founded on a sense of tradition and craftsmanship.
Artists who know how to put a lot of work and attention to detail
in a printmaking respect each other right away. Likewise, of course,
the curiosity and the interest in the craft of other refinements.
Eventually want artistically careful craftsman always know exactly
how it is done. And often arises the desire for direct collaboration.
This desire can Morris, Vollmer and Vietz meet regularly for years.
They have visited each other to meetings in their graphic workshops
in Cologne and Liverpool. And there they have expanded their own printmaking
facilities respectively by the pressure of the other graphic options.
Shall dispose less graphic workshop of John Moores University on fantastic
conditions in the field of screen printing and other techniques of
surface printing. The Cologne Printmaking Workshop in turn maintains
the old printing presses of the Cologne school work (which they could
take over after the closure of the local printmaking department) masterfully
all varieties of gravure printing. From the beginning, in this exchange
happening, other Liverpool and Cologne artists were involved.
That is also the project "From me to you and back" happen
again. The idea is to send graphic works between the two workshops
in Liverpool and Cologne for joint artistic editing back and forth.
One takes on the work of others. Adds pressure to a new facet motif
with a new cliché. Or edit the existing printing plate is a
few shades, so that changed the composition and expanded. Fourteen
artists, seven from Liverpool and seven of Cologne, took part under
the heading "Penpal" on this project, which is based not
only on the development of common works of art but also represents
a special kind of friendship letter. Among the artistic ideas and
written ideas were exchanged. Penpals connect people across great
distances. While by phone or e-mail often terse, factual messages
are exchanged, offer letters in their material presence to the room
for an intense visual and written, philosophical and intellectual
exchange. An exchange of letters between artists gives an insight
into the artistic concept of the other. Individual views can be experienced.
And addressing other ways of working and different artistic positions
expanded its own (artistic) perspective. With Assumpta Budig and Tracy
Hill, Georg Gartz and Pete Clarke, Christina Wrege and Tracy Brown,
Franziska Windisch and Magda Stawarska-Beavan, Guillermo Malfitani
and Francesca Genna, Andreas Vietz and Neil Morris, Jutta Vollmer
and Emma Gregory show seven Cologne Liverpudlian artist couples quite
different ways of artistic understanding.
"Collaborations" between Liverpool and Cologne artists are
an integral part of the activities in the "Eight Days A Week"
project. The myth that artistic work is a fundamental individual act,
joint artistic works are compared, which are more than the mere addition
of two individual creativities. How does an artist on the thematic
and formal ideas of another artist? Follow the Liverpool artist noticeably
different content or visual aspects than their colleagues from Cologne?
How can we change the image of another, without destroying it? How
different individual experiences can inspire each other creatively?
And what does mutual respect for the artistic work of others? Unlike
drawing, photography and painting, printmaking is not generally a
fast art. Each printing plate, so it was also experimentally processed
is only over the duration of careful handles to form a finished print.
A better medium, lead to the development of art between tradition
and timeliness in mind, there is not.
Cologne Graphics Workshop
In Sionstal 17, 50678 Cologne, Tel: 02 21-3100425
28th September to 21 October 2012
Opening: 28.9, 17 clock.
open Fri 17-19 Clock
