Schwaiger, Josef: Runge Revisited Josef Schwaiger's artistic research and the resulting artist's book 'Runge Revisited' are based on the chromatographic accidental discoveries of the chemist Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge (1794 -1867). Runge casually stumbled upon the pictorial design potential of chemical solutions when - and only when - they react with each other dripped onto paper. His originally analytically motivated method of detection turns into a psychedelic rush of images.
It is precisely this paradoxical turn in Runge's approach - ecstasy instead of analysis - that forms the core of Josef Schwaiger's artist's book 'Runge Revisited', which is to be examined experimentally.
Schwaiger's analytical approach to the artistic questioning of Runge's 'educational drive' experiences a further, unsuspected paradoxical turn in the re-enactment: the visual potential of the 'educational drive of the fabrics' is not revealed through creative deviation in the method of application or in the targeted variation of the fabrics, but in the identical repetition!
The copy, cleansed of all creative intentions and procedures, turns out to be the individual, inimitable 'artistic' original. Each of the 63 copies of the screen-printed book contains 63 inserted original chromatographs whose own beauty lies beyond all analysis. ger., en., 63 chromatography images from 6 solutions, UV inkjet for text, silkscrenn prints for the laboratory drawings and illustrations of the project steps, thread-stiched, hardcover with linen spine, oxidation and patination of book title on copper, 63p, 13,8 x 12,2 inch, Ed. of 63, num., sign., Wien, 2019 Request of availability backnext