25274 29084 o

Opposite page: Karin Sander,

Untitled, 1993, wood-chip wallpaper

from Art Cologne, clip frame,

19'!.x 1531.''.

This page: Two views of Karin

Sander's Kernbohrungen (Core

Drillings), 2011, wastepaper from

five offices, five holes in the floor

of the offices/ceiling of the

exhibition space; holes each

11 % x 11 %". Installation views,

Neuer Berliner Kunstverein,

Berlin. Photo, right: Jens Ziehe.

Photo, below: Stefan Alber.

TRACE VALUE BENJAMIN PAUL ON THE ART OF KARIN SANDER

ENVELOPES, FLYERS, invoices, Post-Its, magazines: Visitors to German artist

Karin Sander's 2011 installation Kernbohrungen (Core Drillings) at the Neuer

Berliner Kunstverein found nothing to look at except paper detritus scattered

haphazardly across the floor. Those patient enough to linger, however, might have

witnessed an occasional document falling through the air; glancing upward, these

viewers could clearly see where the clutter was coming from: five holes in the

ceiling, each about a foot in diameter. Sander connected the exhibition space with

the administrative offices situated directly above by piercing the floor next to

employees' desks, in the spots where the wastebaskets normally stood. The insti­

tution's staff created this constantly growing temporary sculpture. All that Sander

had done was prepare the physical conditions for the slipping of debris from one

context to another.

Sander does not invent; she engages with what is already there. Interacting

with specific sites, histories, and social configurations, she derives her work directly

from reality, which she torques with minimal interventions of great precision and

clarity. Her early projects, in particular, convey morphological and even structural

affinities with 1970s indexical strategies . For 3 Riiume (3 Rooms), 1996, Sander made graphite rubbings of the walls, ceilings, doors, windows, and floors of a

trio of exhibition spaces in Vienna's Galerie nachst St. Stephan, registering the surface textures down to the last nail hole, bump, and crack . In Rauhfaser Royal,

1992/1996, she excised a piece of the titular material from a wall of Kunstmuseum

St. Gallen, Switzerland; pasted it onto the glass of a rimless clip frame; and installed

it in the very spot from which it had just been removed.

APRIL 2018 137

Sander does not invent; she derives her work

directly from reality, which she torques with

minimal interventions of great precision.

These projects respectively recall two key works that Rosalind E. Krauss

discusses in her foundational two-part 1977 essay "Notes on the Index": Michelle

Stuart's East/West Wall Memory Relocated, 1976, for which Stuart made rubbings

of large sections of a corridor at P.S. l Contemporary Art Center in New York, and

Lucio Pozzi's P.S.1 Paint, 1976, which consisted of panels that were painted in the

same colors as the sections of wall over which they were installed. Krauss high­

lights how these artists attempt to bring life into art, noting a "quasi-tautological

relationship between signifier and signified," in which the colors and arrangement

of Pozzi's panels "are occasioned by a situation in the world which they merely

register." Per Krauss, the artists-with however sophisticated and personal a lan­

guage-generate circumstances that leave virtually no room for human agency or

transformation. Instead, the "building itself . .. is taken to be a message which can

be presented but not coded." It is through this uncoded, indexical relationship to

reality-Stuart's and Pozzi's works are meaningless outside the physical context

in and from which they were made-and the resultant avoidance of composition,

Krauss implies, that these projects reject modernist notions of aesthetic autonomy

and authorial control.

But such a challenge to modernist epistemes is of little concern for Sander. To

underscore her tautological procedure at P.S.l, Stuart displayed her rubbings

opposite the walls from which she took them, while Sander bound her rubbings

(on hundreds of sheets of A4 paper) into three books, one for each room, and

neatly arranged the volumes on a pasting table. The books varied in size in accor­

dance with the square footage of each space, and in that sense "merely registered"

the respective situations of their making. But by enabling visitors to flip through

the pages and study patterns and abstract images that hold aesthetic appeal regard­

less of whether one is aware of their origin, Sander transformed the rubbings into

autonomous objects-essentially reversing Stuart's procedure . Sander's transfor­

mation of wallpaper into image in Rauhfaser Royal similarly defies any simple

parallel with Pozzi's work. Whereas Pozzi's panels are tautological because they

duplicate, or substitute for, the surfaces they cover, Sander removed and framed a

piece of wallpaper only to hang it exactly at the spot from which she took it.

Rather than an indexical transfer of the wallpaper and hence its double, Rauhfaser

Royal is the actual thing, not the matrix or imprint in some kind of relational system. It is an object that stands for itself as an image and work of art. Unlike the

indexical practices of the '70s analyzed by Krauss, Sander brings not only art into

life but also life into art, imparting renewed urgency to the complex imbrication

of art and the real.

From the beginning, Sander has acknowledged the extent to which the mecha­nisms of the market already mediate between art and life. She does this by simply foregrounding the status of the frame itself, or the picture itself, as a commodity form. This tactic was already front and center in her 1994 installation Wand in Stiicken (Wall in Pieces) at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in Germany. Taking a photograph of the gallery's painted wood-chip wallpaper, duplicating the

138 ARTFORUM

Lucio Pozzi, P.S.1 Paint,

1976, acrylic on wood panel.

Installation view, P.S.1

Contemporary Art Center,

New York.

image with offset printing, and displaying it within 1,177 clip frames in a dense

salon-style hanging, the artist used the whole range of the twenty-seven available

formats of her chosen rimless supports. Small gaps between prints offered glimpses

of the surface beneath, distinguishing the real wall from the one depicted in the

framed photographs, which, furthermore, cast shadows that accentuated their

three-dimensional objecthood, Optically, the distinction between positive and

negative space, between the prints and the gaps between them, was surprisingly

unstable. Visitors could purchase the numbered and signed frames with the prints

and take them home. With time, the installation thus slowly disintegrated; its title,

Wall in Pieces, emphasizes this atomization, this dispersal into the circuits of the

market. Unlike Rauhfaser Royal, which turns an actual piece of wallpaper into an

image, here the image is a photographic representation, which does not relate

indexically to the specific wall segment on which it hangs, since Sander uses the

same photograph in all the frames. The pictures thus do not constitute the wall or

its double but, again, something more complex and contradictory: representations

that literally obscure that to which they refer. Ironically, then, it is only once all

the images have been sold and the process of commodification is complete that

the view of the wall is free again-only then can it return to being itself, no longer

m pieces.

For Stoffraum Art Basel (Canvas Room Art Basel), 1996, Sander cut 464

sections of various dimensions from the fabric wall coverings then used in the

"Statements" section at Art Basel; placed them in clip frames, each of which she

hung on one of the walls of Galerie nachst St. Stephan's booth exactly on top of

the section from which she removed the covering; and offered the individual

images for sale. Here, commodification goes hand in hand with the conversion of

the wall from passive support to active object and image in its own right. To

become art is to become a product. Of course, Sander is activating not only the

wall but also viewers and collectors by making them participants in the work's

production. Through buying and removing the frames, they are responsible for

the continuously changing gestalt of the installation. Their activity is paradoxical,

however, because to sustain the installation they have to diminish it, and ultimately

dissolve it entirely. Purchasers of the frames leave an increasiµg number of negative

spaces on the naked wall. What sets this unraveling of the mechanisms of the art

market apart is the tension at its core. Collectors are left with a framed image, but it's also a fragment, a shard, a part of a ruin, and a reminder that the work of art

as such-the installation-was transformed, actually destroyed, by the same com­

modifying impulse that brought it into being. Sander conceives such dialectical scenarios but happily cedes control over their

unfolding. She assumes the role of artist as impresario, whose work consists in

setting up situations that facilitate the creation of art. In art school in Stuttgart in the 1980s, Sander was already working reflexively within-but also against the

grain of-art history and its obsession with authorship. She developed a procedure

that recalled the treatment of marble by Renaissance sculptors: painstakingly

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Clockwise, from top left: Karin Sander, Stoffraum Art Basel (Canvas Room Art Basel), 1996, fabric covering of art-fair walls, 434

(of the original 464) clip frames in ten standard formats, each signed and numbered, overall, 9' 11" x 20' 1" x 18' 4". Photo:

Andrea Rossetti. Karin Sander, Stoffraum Art Basel (Canvas Room Art Basel), 1996, fabric covering of art-fair walls, 434 (of the

original 464) clip frames In ten standard formats, each signed and numbered. Installation view, Karin Sander's studio, Berlin, �7.

Photo: Andrea Rossetti. Karin Sander, Wand In Stiicken (Wall In Pieces), 1994, 1,177 clip frames In twenty.sewn stalldQl'(I fCM'lllli(t

offset prints, each signed and numbered. Installation view, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany. Photo: Martin Lallffill:

APRIL 2018 139

From the beginning, Sander has acknowledged

the extent to which the mechanisms of the market

already mediate between art and life.

140 ARTFORUM

....__

Top left: Karin Sander, Wandstiick

180 x 540 (Wall Piece 180 x 540), 2014, polished wall paint. Installation view, Musee d'Art Moderne Grand-Due Jean, Luxembourg. Photo: Studio Karin Sander.

Top center: Karin Sander, Gebrauchsbild 19, Schweinehiitte

Maxi (Patina Painting 19, Pig Hut Maxi), 2002, stretched canvas, white universal primer, 11 'I, x 91/,''. Created in Stuttgart, Germany, January 19-21, 2002. From the series "Gebrauchsbilder"

(Patina Paintings), 1990-.

-

Top right: Karin Sander, Mailed

Painting 43, Bonn-Berlin­

Gmunden-Berlin-S-Chanf-

St. Gallen-Berlin-London­

Berlin-Bie/efeld, 2007, stretched canvas in standard size, white universal primer, 31 '/, x 393/s".

Bottom right: Karin Sander, Drawing No. 458, 1998, human hair, paper, 11 x 8'1,''. From the 970-part suite Haarzeichnungen

(Hair Drawings), 1998.

Bottom left: Karin Sander, Mailed

Painting 115, Bonn-Berlin­

Medellin-Siegen-Berlin, Madrid,

Miinchen-Koln-Wien-Miinchen,

2010, stretched canvas in standard size, white universal primer, 63 X 63".

Right: View of Karin Sander's

studio, Berlin, 2015. Works from

2005 to 2015. Left: Mailed

paintings. Right: Works from

the series "Gebrauc/1sbilder"

(Patina Paintings), 1990-.

Photo: Andrea Rossetti.

Right, below: Karin Sander,

Reeve 1:5, 2012, 3-D color scan

of a living person, polychrome

3-D printing, plaster, color pigment

ink, 10% X 2 '/2 X 21/,''.

j

•

sanding and polishing a rectangular area of white wall to the point where the

paint appears shiny and translucent. Like the artists of centuries past who aimed

to animate dead stone with reflected light, Sander, by removing a thin layer of

pigment, seemed to offer a view beneath the skin into the inner life of the architec­

ture. Wall Piece and Wall Panel, 1988, emphasized this effect by juxtaposing the

polished area with a white panel of the same dimensions, as if it were the removed

lid or top layer. But the polished patches resulting from these mini-excavations

offered no insights; instead, they mirrored their surroundings, simultaneously

activating the wall and its immediate environment by turning both into images­

misty, fleeting, mutable, changing with the shifting light and the movements of the

people in the room.

Issues of chance and noncomposition are constitutive of Sander's play of shift­

ing signifiers, which constantly challenges the status of the work of art. But if in

1988 the arena of chance was confined to the picture itself, as it were-the polished

surfaces on which shadows played-two years later the more radically aleatory

and reflexive strategies of Sander's mature practice had begun to take shape. In

1990 Sander commenced her ongoing series "Gebrauchsbilder" (Patina Paintings),

for which primed canvases of standard sizes and formats are installed as a curator

or collector wishes. The titles of the series' individual works name the location

where each was installed, and the time period each work spent at the named loca­

tion is recorded on its removal. So: The title of Gebrauchsbild 19, Schweinehutte Maxi (Patina Painting 19, Pig Hut Maxi), 2002, documents the work's fate of

being completely torn apart after only two days in its stable home in Stuttgart,

while Gebrauchsbild 26, Ein Jahr im Schlafzimmer (Patina Painting 26, One Year

in the Bedroom), 2002-2003, lasted awhile in a residence in Mainz, Germany, and

still looks as pristine as ever. The actual images are chance residues on the neutral

canvases, which serve to register traces of specific times, places, and actions. For

instance, two canvases hung in kitchens may differ vastly according to the

amount of time each spent in the room, their specific locations, and, of course,

the personality and habits of the people doing the

cooking. The title of the series emphasizes the agency

of the curators and collectors: The German term Gebrauch means "use," positing Sander's "use­

pictures" as figurations of their own handling. The

"Gebrauchsbilder" are therefore portraits not only

of their owners but also of ownership and use as

such. Sander accordingly insists that the original

purchasers' signatures accompany hers on the cer­

tificate that comes with the work.

While owners maintain at least a measure of con­

trol in the "Gebrauchsbilder," chance alone is the

driving force of Sander's mailed paintings. In this

body of work, begun in 2004, Sander sends an unpro­

tected white canvas by regular mail to its exhibiting

institution and asks that institution to apply the same

means of transportation when moving the work to a

new location (be it another exhibition venue, gallery

storage, or a collector's home) and then to add these

destinations to the work's caption. The primed stan­dard-format surfaces thus register the traces of these

travels; in addition to the dirt and damaged edges

left behind by handling, they usually display tech­

nical materials such as address labels, postage, customs forms, etc. The journeys instigate an

accumulative image of themselves on the mailed

paintings, each of which looks different. And each state is always only a momentary impression,

because further trips will lead to more marks

APRIL 2018 141

Sander's works are always self-portraits­

they're just not of the artist herself.

and new images as the open-ended process continues. Neither Sander nor the

works' receivers have any control over how and by whom the canvases are treated,

nor what they will look like after their next excursion. While the marks result from

multiple, often anonymous and unknown sources and are there for various reasons

and purposes, they have in common a lack of aesthetic motivation. Nobody who

made them had any creative intentions. Yet the paintings thus produced are far

from neutral or mute. Rudimentary, unmediated, the smudges and stickers and

miscellaneous marks all contain information-about the handlers, shipping com­

panies, and customs systems, and about the collectors and institutions interested

in exhibiting and possessing these itinerant canvases.

Sander's strategies are often indexical, then, but not to squeeze the art out of

art or to get rid of the work by converting it into life. Her work is never tauto­

logical; the artist has granted agency and image-generating prerogative to users,

objects, and life. Relying as it does on broad-based participation, Sander's oeuvre

is social in the truest sense of the word. Her works are always self-portraits­

they're just not of the artist herself. Rather, it is other people-and things, and

situations-who inscribe themselves on her works. In Haarzeichnungen (Hair

Drawings), 1998, she plucked about a thousand strands of hair from some eighty

individuals and dropped each strand onto a sheet of paper. Every hair is different,

and each yields its own configuration-each "draws" itself, and functions as the

mark of its donor. So yes, these are portraits-but they are not likenesses. Rather,

each work is like a relic, a trace that stands for the entire person. But unlike relics,

in which labels identify the person embodied in the fragment, Sander keeps her

Haarzeichnungen anonymous, and thus curtails the implication that the truth of a

person is created by unmediated presence. Haarzeichnungen addresses the crux and

central problem of portraiture-how to render, but not essentialize, subjectivity­

by short-circuiting the simplistic conflation of referent and representation; no such

conflation is possible, because the referent, or subject, remains unknown.

In her full-length portrait sculptures, which she started in 1997, the same chal­

lenge is navigated via technology. Sander scans people with a 3-D body scanner,

which a 3-D printer then translates into horizontally layered acrylic sculptures.

This mechanical process recalls the making of plaster casts such as death masks,

which, like relics, were historically a way to preserve a true likeness and eternalize

the presence of a deceased person. Sander encourages her subjects-by choosing

their own clothing, pose, and expression-to take control of the image, for which

Sander and her technological apparatus function as mere medium. But the sugges­

tions of authenticity and autonomy are undermined by Sander's decision to pro­

duce the figures in a scale of 1:10 or 1:5, among others, and by the limitations of

Opposite page: Karin Sander,

Kopfsa/at (Lettuce), 2012, fresh

lettuce, stainless-steel nail,

dimensions variable. From the

series "Kitchen Pieces," 2012.

Left: Karin Sander, Kartoffel (Potato),

2012, fresh potato, stainless-steel

nail, dimensions variable. From the

series "Kitchen Pieces," 2012.

the device itself, which slightly blurs the colors and re-creates the body in slices

that lead to uneven contours. The resulting disruption of the otherwise powerful

effect of realism highlights the sculptures' status as made works: not relics, not

casts, not instantiations of presence.

In "Kitchen Pieces," 2012, the autopoietic undercurrent of Sander's images

finds its expression in decay. For these works, she simply nails fresh fruit and

vegetables to the wall; they change color and shrink over time, turning into curi­

ously distorted and barely recognizable objects. The food eventually loses its nutri­

tional value and becomes sculpture, precisely because no one has interfered with

or consumed it. This rite of passage is effected solely by the interaction between

the specific constitution of the natural product (will organic salad produce differ­

ent configurations?) and the climate conditions in the room. The self-display of

"Kitchen Pieces," then, is even more authentic and active than that of the hair in

Haarzeichnungen and the individuals in the body-scan sculptures. While the latter

are prone to self-fashioning (always informed by social conventions and thus never

authentic), the former is an isolated fragment frozen in time. The "Kitchen Pieces,"

instead, engender their own continuous, (largely) autonomous process of trans­

formation, in which different facets of their being are revealed until they finally

decompose. By shedding their practical purpose as consumables and becoming

aesthetic objects, the fruit and vegetables actively alter their identity while never­

theless maintaining their ontological constitution. In decay, they sublimate their

status, yet remain the same.

Herein, then, lies the dialectic of Sander's project: to turn art into life, only to

transform both in the course of returning life again into art. In "Real Fictions:

Alternatives to Alternative Facts," published in these pages in April 2017, Hal Foster

observes a tendency in recent art to employ great artifice to "make the real real

again, which is to say, effective again, felt again, as such." To illustrate how these

artists activate the real in response to the assault on fact and facticity, Foster cites

a seemingly confounding statement by the actor Stephen Dillane, who in Tacita

Dean's film Event for a Stage, 2015, asserts: "Art is what makes life more interest­

ing than art." Sander's fictions similarly activate the real-not in a tautological maneuver to align art and life, but rather to sensitize us to the aesthetic possibilities

inherent in the experience of the everyday. She makes us apprehend the way reality

is constructed by fiction and the way that objects are constructed by representations, and vice versa. Sander has quietly been exploring and expanding that potential for

decades, and her real fictions have never been more necessary. D

BASED IN NEW YORK AND BERLIN, BENJAMIN PAUL IS A CRITIC AND AN ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF RENAISSANCE

ART HISTORY AT RUTGERS, THE STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW JERSEY.

APRIL 2018 143