It is easy to feel the temptation, when studying the work of Johannes Schön, to try to make sense of what you see in front of you, to expose its hidden meaning, to solve something about it. The intricately applied lines of characters hint at a sort of looping script – maybe you lean slightly closer, hoping to identify letters among them, the outlines of sentences. Eventually it becomes clear that the markings don’t behave this way, so you take a step back, taking the image in as a whole – perhaps the lines together produce a coherent image, a landscape, a gesture. But again the images resist such literal interpretation, they resist having meaning imposed on or extracted from them. It’s wrong to try to read them like this, you decide. Then you see something at the centre of the frame – a word, it looks like – and again you lean in.
Schön’s work provokes these charged, dialectic spaces, and he seems to enjoy this. The pieces are serious but also playful, and even as they activate curiosity they direct our attention in many different directions, inviting us to consider the functions of writing, reading, performance, spectatorship, and interpretation itself. SLEEK had the chance to discuss the artist’s recent work and try to pry into some of its constituent dimensions. At the centre of our discussion is a triptych of works that Schön refers to as a “diary of notes,” which are among the boldest and most compelling pieces in his oeuvre. Based in Berlin, Schön has worked with institutions throughout the city, including the KW Institute, Wilhelm Hallen, and Esther Schipper.
Writing seems to be your signature. Where does this desire to produce your art around calligraphic elements come from?
Just like calligraphy, hieroglyphics perhaps, picture words deals a lot with negotiating spaces as a language on its own. I have been very fascinated with the Rosetta Stone recently.
Writing as a communicative act is something that usually has a very precise message, a precise idea being conveyed from the author to the reader. The communicative dimension of your “written” works seems less literal, less explicit than in traditional “texts.” How would you like people to read these works? Do you want them to be read?
I want them to be viewed as writing as one views an artefact with writing first. To be processed as is first.
What would you say to someone who wanted to describe these pieces as works of literature?
Literature? Yes. Possibly. Yes.
Your work can sometimes be understood differently depending on the distance from which we admire it. What is your relationship to proximity and distance?
Yes, a contemplation of proximity, distance and scale.
Do you see these pieces as products in their own right, or as records of a performance? Is it reasonable to make a distinction between the two?
They are both. There is no difference as one produces and records.
The black space in these three pieces seems to have quite a bit of authority – do you see these blacks more as empty space or as a mark of erasure, as an end or the possibility of a continuation?
The spaces themselves are the works as we ourselves occupy space.
Which significance and importance do you attach to white spaces?
Only to make markings. I hope I left marks.