Image Presentation Woodcuts 1995–2006 (PDF)

The woodcuts in the image archive – a hybrid entanglement of graphics and sculpture – are all subject to their own methodological procedure, which calls for a short explanation:

From the trunk section of a tree, very thin sheets of wood are peeled off radially. This form of an initial technical woodcut generates two elements: First, very delicate and fragile leaves – as desired, these may be less than 1mm or more than 3 cm in thickness. Second, a cylinder, which will serve as the printing-block in what follows – this means it is de facto heavy enough to exercise the necessary “pressure”.

The printing-“block” (here, unlike in English, the German term “Druck-stock” fittingly refers to a stick) is in this case in fact – in keeping with the actual sense of the German word – a round, oblong piece of wood. This is provided with a relief, a negative form, and then covered with ink or some other printing substance and rolled over the wooden leaves lying on the floor, whose surfaces have meanwhile dried out slightly. In what follows, the printing-block becomes sculpturally autonomous – among other things, becoming a sort of ruined mirror – and is placed in relationship to the prints in manifold ways. All of the material parameters needed for these specific woodcuts are inherent to the tree. It is a closed system. Put in poetic terms, it is: A redoubled unique.