Watercolor, pencil, mirror paper, collage
sheet: 42 x 29,7 cm, framed: 47 x 35 cm
Unique piece
signed, dated
Since the 1990s, Mark von Schlegell’s interdisciplinary practice has ranged between literature, theory, science fiction, film, comics, performance, theatre, and art. The artist’s and author’s watercolors are based on literary and science-fiction models: “For me the watercolor work on paper is ‘the writing of art’—a provisional, conceptual visual field that can function organically in and apart from the field of signs.” In 2017, von Schlegell exhibited watercolors for the first time with a (book) portrait series, and created illustrations for his publication Realometer: Re-Loaded.
During a residency stay in the summer of 2021, he not only brushed up on his reading, but also experimented with the possibilities of collage and reflective surfaces, resulting in the works on paper for the Kölnischer Kunstverein.
“Has venture capitalism killed off the Open Society? To the paperback revolution, the wider apocalypse may have been just another Hammond Innes era genre story. For one thing, hard times are good times for cheap books. By virtue of the revolution’s pursuit of nothing but content’s current real value, its mass market foot soldiers are not quite trash. They are stolen from hotels, left in boxes on the street, donated to used bookstores, traded among fans, sold for coppers in thrift stores or given away as libraries dissolve. ‘I was more a resident by hereditary seat,’ records the insect narrator of Patricia Highsmith’s 1972 tale Notes from a Respectable Cockroach, ‘than any of the human beasts in the hotel.’ (London and New York: Verso, 2000. 49.) Husked in the decay of the public space its brilliant covers once plumbed, the paperback revolution nests comfortably inside deteriorating human habitations…” – Mark von Schlegell, “The Paperback Revolution: An Introduction,” in: Artforum, April 2010.
A New York born Irish citizen, Mark von Schlegell has been Cologne-based since 2005 and has taught art and literature at CalArts in Valencia, the San Francisco Art Institute, and Städelschule in Frankfurt/Main. In English he is published by Semiotext(e); in German by Matthes und Seitz and Merve Verlag. Mark von Schlegell is represented by Jan Kaps Galerie, Cologne. His visual art has been shown in the US (New York), South Korea (Seoul), Denmark, and throughout Germany. A founding member of the Pure Fiction collective since 2011, its radio plays, dramaturgy, and sonic experimentation will be continued with a performance series based on Mary Shelley’s sci-fi novel The Last Man for the Kölnischer Kunstverein in early 2022.
