Florian Waldvogel

The facelessness of the protagonists in Josef Zekoff's paintings is one of their most distinctive features. From emblematic labyrinths - he does also paint ornaments and maps - to drawn stick figures, the in-between space occupied by these paintings encourages self-reflection, which does, however, require courage on the part of the viewer. Or as Florian Waldvogel writes in his introductory text: Do the protagonists of his paintings seek an encounter with something that goes beyond the world of objects and fixed quantities? Is it, as Martin Heidegger writes in > What is Metaphysics? nothing dread nothing

Words become images—writing, drawings, designs. For around twenty years Stefan Marx has been studying script. Lines of songs, sayings, sentences, and quotations, which he then translates in his own script, his graphic writing, into paintings or drawings—two-dimensional surfaces. The poetry of the statements and the painterly quality of the execution combine to form strong works of art. Marx develops each of his pieces with great precision for the specific situation, for the individual work of art, regardless of whether it is an edition, a unique work, a house, or a small invitation card. This is the first book about his Word Paintings in their many varieties and in all media. Essays explain Marx’s drawing, printmaking, and painting, as well as his unique interplay of art and pop culture, sign and life.

Alexandra Bircken's sculptures and installations consist of knitted-together bits of wood, branches, stone, metal, dried plants and leather. Her interest in the preciousness and abjection of fashion and flower arrangement synthesizes a homely, therapeutic, arts-and-crafts aesthetic to create amuletlike objects that border on the spiritual, if not the occult.