Thinking about other German artists ahead of the 2019 Joseph Beuys in Connemara Residency (www.beuysconnemara.space) I turn to Hanne Darboven. Her work endlessly fascinates and confuses me, and I find it hard to pin down this interest.
Maybe it is the use of rigid systems, including mathematical equations, and vast amounts of framed material. Or perhaps it is her use of handwriting, which today seems so poetic, and the collecting of vast amounts of things, be they objects or postcards.
The scale of her work ‘Cultural History 1880-1983’ is vast, rooms and rooms totalling 1,600 framed pictures. Together they are overpowering (I have not seen them in person, but feel they would quickly give me a headache, yet I would want to keep looking at them) and remind us that history too, is overpowering and not just something which can be neatly bound into a 400 page book.
Finally, her house-studio (pictured above) shows the huge variety of things which she collected, itself another art work.
