JORINDE VOIGT
ON REALITY

KÖNIG LONDON is pleased to present ON REALITY, a solo exhibition by Jorinde Voigt. This new body of work consists of four series created in the artist’s Berlin studio in 2021 and continue the artist’s investigation into using sculptural elements to expand on the medium of drawing. Each collage is mounted behind glass in a black wooden box, mirrored from the inside. Using coloured paper, Voigt combines her visual vocabulary of drawing, writing and numbering with new techniques: layering cut out shapes and bringing the viewer’s image into the composition with mirrored glass. By introducing a third dimension to her conceptual works on paper Voigt finds a new way to address for her longstanding questions around perception.

Her work is primarily informed by her preoccupation with specific philosophical models, artistic and scientific themes that she addresses in a formal, minimal language. Her works make inner visions tangible by transferring Voigt’s intellectual investigations into action and material. Lines are formed through cuts by a scalpel and layered to build a reality as a membrane. Voigt slits and splits, opens layer by layer simultaneously deconstructing and rebuilding. The cut contours of the paper are set alongside swooping lines in oil pastels, ink or graphite - the timeline of an action or positions in space of varying intensity.

The STUDIE ZUR WIRKLICHKEIT series (EN: Study on Reality, 2021) questions reality, more specifically the perception of movement in space and temporal sequences in process philosophy. These concepts are visualised in transversal markings on interconnected layers of the work. Voigt extracts central terms such as ‘potential’, ‘position’ or time markers such as ‘Today’, ‘Again’, ‘Loop’, or ‘2 Sec’, noting mood indications in the form of emojis.

Voigt’s marking and notations are often in reference to music notes and phrasings. In PARTICELLA (2021), the artist creates a composition of repetitive forms of layered cardboard on which she annotates temporal and choreographic concepts.

The artist’s work explores chronology and the natural rhythms that structure experience, such as the seasons, the day-night rhythm, pulse or respiration. In her series of works ATEM STUDIE (EN: Breathing Study, 2021), repeating elements and curved arrows of different directions and lengths indicate a rhythm or an up and downward movement.

In THE SUM OF ALL BEST PRACTICES (2022), Voigt uses the shapes of leaves she has collected from trees in her surroundings, traced in graphite onto black cardboard. She layers the cut-out leaves over a reflective background, offering new perspectives that invite the viewing into the work. Light and shadow, as well as the absorbent quality of the black cardboard change the appearance of the leaves depending on the viewer’s point of view. Thus, light becomes an essential and immaterial component of this work. These works highlight that each leaf is a result of the evolution of the botanical world across various millennia, and signifying their ability to survive and persist. ‘Every present form tells of its own past’, Voigt states, discovering in this work yet another way of representing temporality.

Parallel to the London exhibition, Voigt's 18-part series INTENSITÄT, ATMOSPHÄREN UND MUSIK (EN: Intensity, Atmosphere and Music, 2021) can be seen at ST. AGNES in Berlin. Here, the artist visually explores the essay of the same title by Hermann Schmitz, the German founder of New Phenomenology.