Hanne Darboven (1941–2009)
Construction Drawings (1966/67)
The first construction drawings emerged during Hanne Darboven’s stay in New York, where she met artists such as Carl Andre and Sol Lewitt. Using a pencil and sometimes a ballpoint pen, she drew geometric constructions on graph paper based on a previously fixed scheme. With these numeric constructions, Hanne Darboven tried to establish a “constructivism beyond painting.” Lucy Lippard later called them “permutational drawings,” a complex system consisting of lines that are axially and diagonally symmetrical and represent numbers, series of numbers, and digit sums, thus defining her very own contribution to American Conceptual Art, which was just in the process of emerging at the time. Konrad Fischer exhibited a further development of these constructions alongside the elements series DW by Charlotte Posenenske for the first time in Germany.
Parallel to the Konstruktionszeichnungen, we present the work Querschnitte (Cross Sections, 1984), which consists of 174 panels; upon each of the panels, twelve postcards are mounted, inscribed with felt-pen. The Querschnitte include not only number, series, act, and construction, but two other dimensions as well: time and music. The digit sums of the dates of year are listed and in parallel translated to her own notation.
Charlotte Posenenske (1930–1985)
Elemente Serie B (1967–today)
After Charlotte Posenenske already began working with spray paint in 1964 (spray gun on hardboard or pa- per), the next year she created her first folds made of paper and aluminum with surfaces once again covered with spray paint, in part with linear brushes, in part completely. The Diagonale Faltung (Diagonal Fold) created in 1966 represents the first serially conceived wall object by the artist. This concept underwent an expansion with the elements of the Serie A (1966) and B (1967). Of series A, only individual objects and prototypes exist. Series B was the first to be made as a reproducible, serial object in four RAL colors (red, yellow, blue, black) and in five different folds and/or curves (concave and complex). Following the artist’s intention, the objects are to be manufactured in as serial a way as possible; they are to be combined by the “consumers” (collectors, curators) in which ever way they want (as a diptych, triptych, series, wall or floor object, standing up or lying down) and made and distributed as affordably as possible. Based on an idea of Dr. Burkhard Brunn, for our exhibition elements of the same colors are combined, which can be combined apparently endlessly in a horizontal row.
Merrill Wagner (b. 1935)
Acrylic on Canvas (1967–1976)
Directly after completing her studies at New York’s Art Students League in 1964, Merrill Wagner began working with abstract geometric forms (circles, rectangles, lines) on canvas. Monochromatic surfaces in only a few basic colors (red, blue, and black) dominate the large-format canvases, reminiscent of the abstractions made at the same time by Ad Reinhardt or Carmen Herrera while also showing a proximity to the work of Agnes Martin, Brice Marden, Frank Stella, and Ellsworth Kelly. Nevertheless, as of the mid-1960s the artist developed very unique, quite abstract paintings with monochromatic green, blue, and ochre-coloured surfaces that can be seen as landscapes and that as of the 1970s were also transferred to other materials (adhesive tape, plexiglass, slate, steel, stone). In an apparently playful and harmonic fashion, the wide-ranging oeuvre combines dimensions of time and decay, concept, order and chance, poetry, color and material.
