ART-PRESENTATION: Hanne Darboven

Hanne Darboven studied painting from 1962–66 at the Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg. In 1966 Darboven moved to New York, where she established herself as a major Conceptual artist. During her initial stay in New York (1966-68), Darboven developed her Konstruktionen, which comprised a neutral language of numbers in linear constructions using pen, pencil, typewriter, and graph paper as materials.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Dia Art Foundation Archive

The exhibition “Hanne Darboven’s Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983” at Dia Foundation offers the viewer, the opportunity to experience this important work from Dia’s permanent Collection. From the moment when Hanne Darboven moved to New York, her work has been informed by Conceptual Art practices. Based by the late 1960s on various forms of numerical writing, her systematic work securely occupied the realm of abstraction and universality. “I only use numbers because it is a way of writing without describing. . . . It has nothing to do with mathematics. Nothing! I choose numbers because they are so constant, confined, and artistic. Numbers are probably the only real discovery of mankind. A number of something (two chairs, or whatever) is something else. It’s not pure number and has other meanings”. Comprising 1,590 sheets, each measuring 70×50 cm, and 19 sculptural objects, “Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983”, is an overwhelming and encyclopedic installation. The work weaves together cultural, social, and historical references with autobiographical documents, postcards, pinups of film and rock stars, documentary references to the first and second world wars, geometric diagrams for textile weaving, a sampling of New York doorways, illustrated covers from news magazines, the contents of an exhibition catalogue devoted to postwar European and American art, a kitschy literary calendar, and extracts from some of Darboven’s earlier works. The panels are sequenced and grouped, with the groups then juxtaposed in arrangements that often seem little more than chance associations. In contrast to many of Darboven’s previous large-scale works, no overriding calendrical system structures this work. Such is the magnitude of its scale that it invites, not a reading, but a visual experience.

Info: Dia:Chelsea, 545 West 22nd Street, New York, Duration: 5/11/16- , Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-18:00, http://diaart.org