Jimmie Durham
Mäßige Materialfehler, 2000
9 etchings and an accompanying text, numbered and signed
Each 42 x 32 cm - 16 1/2 x 12 5/8 in
Edition of 6 arabic and 6 roman
Copyright The Artist & Levey Kwok
“A Meditation on Work and Language: In Salzau, on the Baltic Sea near Kiel, I found pre-historic stone tools, made of flint by human hands thousands of years ago. Rainer...
“A Meditation on Work and Language:
In Salzau, on the Baltic Sea near Kiel, I found pre-historic stone tools, made of flint by human hands thousands of years ago.
Rainer Haarman and Fritz Marqull invited me to make a series of dry-point etchings on copper plate at a print studio in Salzau in 1999. The stone tools worked perfectly well. I used them, and pieces of broken glass, sandpaper, and even traditional etching tools borrowed from Fritz, to make these etchings.
Scratching words backwards into a hard surface is an odd experience. It makes clear that written language is drawing – and that, like stone tools it comes from work and play.
I think that language does not begin with the desire to name things, but with the need to describe action: ‘search’, ‘help’, ‘run’, ‘come’, ‘dance’, ‘work’.
My appreciation to Friedrich Meschede and the D.A.A.D., who supported this edition, to Barbara Wien who produced it, to Fritz Marqull who printed it, and to Rainer Haarmann.”
In Salzau, on the Baltic Sea near Kiel, I found pre-historic stone tools, made of flint by human hands thousands of years ago.
Rainer Haarman and Fritz Marqull invited me to make a series of dry-point etchings on copper plate at a print studio in Salzau in 1999. The stone tools worked perfectly well. I used them, and pieces of broken glass, sandpaper, and even traditional etching tools borrowed from Fritz, to make these etchings.
Scratching words backwards into a hard surface is an odd experience. It makes clear that written language is drawing – and that, like stone tools it comes from work and play.
I think that language does not begin with the desire to name things, but with the need to describe action: ‘search’, ‘help’, ‘run’, ‘come’, ‘dance’, ‘work’.
My appreciation to Friedrich Meschede and the D.A.A.D., who supported this edition, to Barbara Wien who produced it, to Fritz Marqull who printed it, and to Rainer Haarmann.”