I am not so much interested in telling a certain story than in HOW stories, in general, can be told [+]

When did you discover your fascination for Comics? ——— During my studies there was a time when I tried to go back to my childhood drawings —leaving what I’ve learned behind, trying to work with spatiality in a way that’s not preoccupied by central perspective and so on. In this connection I remembered how I taught myself to draw the face of Mickey Mouse. After years I could still recall what I memorized as a child. It was very schematic, almost like drawing a letter. I found this super interesting and started to remember other things I had internalized, too —Donald’s hat or his collar, Mickey’s gloves or shoes, the nose of Goofy and so on. So, bit by bit, I built a visual vocabulary that felt inexhaustible to me as I was able to deconstruct, repeat and vary it, over and over again. And at the same time it was easily recognizable for everyone. What excites you about repetition and variation? ——— To me, repetition and variation is very much connected to narration. I remember a statement from the artist Peter Roehr, who said that his video and tone montages were changing their source material by repeating it. In fact I’m more influenced by minimal and conceptual art than comic. But formally speaking I don’t see much difference between a serial work by Roehr, for example, or a comic strip. Both is based on repetition, variation and combinatorics. Working in publications, or let’s say: printed media in general, seems like a logical consequence to me. It continues repetition and variation on a technical level. What is the significance of narration in your work? ——— I am not so much interested in telling a certain story than in HOW stories, in general, can be told. How is narration functioning? What is the minimum it needs? At first I didn’t include text into my work. In the past years, it more and more became a visual element I like to experiment with. Usually it’s just a sentence or a word that I use to directly address my viewers. I like to think of them as an active part of my work. Above that I’m interested in the differences between (or the similarities of) text and image, putting the semantic meaning aside. I’m not sure yet where this is going to lead me but I guess it will affect the way I’m dealing with narration. Can you give us a sneak preview of the new wall drawing you are going to show at Salzamt? ——— I was looking for a good visual link between the overall topic of this exhibition “Handapparate” (“reference books”) and my work. I thought of the double meaning of the German word “Signatur”, which means signature but also shelfmark, in a library context. In the context of art, a signature plays a significant role in how we receive an artwork —is it authentic?— and of course in how it will be received on the art market. Then, rather randomly, I read a text about Richard Artschwager and how he had an exhibition which —against expectation— didn’t show his “signature paintings” but other works. And I stumbled over this phrase and although I knew the term “signature artwork”, I wondered if he maybe indeed did some signature paintings? Turns out he didn’t. But then I knew —that’s what I’m gonna do! [-]

Leinhos blurs the dialectics of repetition and difference [+]

FRENCH ABSTRACT FORMALIST COMICS (FRENCH STRUCTURAL COMICS): AN ARTISTIC MOVEMENT In the mid-2010s, a group of young French artists began creating wordless comics with geometric and minimalist style and little or no narrative. What they show instead is more of a “process”. The emotionless and mechanical style and lack of narrative and words lead the reader to focus on the formal qualities and abstract concepts of comics, visual art, and printed media, such as space-time, movement, body, sign, texture, representation, transformation, repetition/difference, etc. I call this new budding movement French Abstract Formalist Comics. They are “Abstract” Formalist comics not because they do not show representational images —they do, and this is a critical difference between them and Abstract Comics— but because they show abstract narrative and study abstract and formalist themes, concepts, and motives. They could also be called French Structural Comics, because they are similar to works of Structural Cinema such as Michael Snow’s Wavelength (1968). They share a physical environment, geography, and period; artistic forms (style, aesthetics of comics); themes and motives; and formal as well as the structural features of comics, printed media, and visual art. They also share a community and platform. The prime example is the anthology Lagon, edited by Alexis Beauclair, Jean-Philippe Bretin, Bettina Henni, and Sammy Stein, all of whom are French Structural Comics artists, though not every work in Lagon is Structural Comics. (For example, Simon Hanselman was in it). Éditions Matière, which has had the seminal influence on the development of the movement, publishes many FSC. [...] The comics reader creates the movement, time, and continuity from the sequence of static discrete images as she reads the comics. Stefanie Leinhos (German) interrogates this dialectic and other assumptions of comics reading, such as the ontology of representation employing the repetitive images in Is There Something I Should Know (2013). In It Will All Be Worth It in the End (2013) and Read It Out Loud (2018), Leinhos blurs the dialectics of repetition and difference, which Thierry Groensteen argues in The System of Comics is one of the most essential principles of comics, by presenting all the color variations of the image motif on the same page. As the image stays the same in spite of the variations, Leinhos questions what constitutes the privilege of “The Original.” [...] [-]