Ann Noël
Einzelheiten des Lebens
04 Feb - 06 Apr 2023
Ann Noël, YOU, 1981, Installation view of Einzelheiten des Lebens, ChertLüdde, Berlin, 2023, Selection of 36 Black ink drawings on paper, each: 42 x 30 cm
ChertLüdde is honored to present a solo exhibition dedicated to the work of Ann Noël (b. 1944, Plymouth), a British-born artist based in Berlin since the 1980s. Bearing in mind the diverse components of subjects and interests at the core of the artist’s practice, the exhibition Einzelheiten des Lebens (Details of Living) focuses on Noël’s artistic upbringing as a graphic designer and printmaker adjacent to her connection to the city of Berlin and its community.
The poetry behind little details of life, small everyday gestures, affections and friendships, connections and moments of disconnection frame this exhibition’s core elements, which begins with a constitutive symbol: a key. Initially created in 1989 for the exhibition REFERENZEN at Karo Galerie in Berlin, this collage comprises photocopies of cut-out silver keys belonging to the artist; all are small but significant objects from Ann Noël’s life. Keys to her old office at Harvard, her home, car, apartments left behind, lockers, suitcases and mailboxes – these places and entities are bound by their purpose as containers of life, of experiences and memories, precious fragments to be held. This emblem of opening and closing, of keeping near or locking away, stirs up the potential Einzelheiten des Lebens in our own lives, as the exhibition title suggests. Moving between fragments and memories, this exhibition is realized thereby through artistic and day-to-day articulation.
Principal in the show is the wooden triptych Freundeskreis, dated from 1990-1991 and reexhibited in Berlin for the first time since then. Commissioned by the Berlin Senate for the Weltstattberlin exhibition inside the Alexanderplatz underground, the work consists of handwritten texts by the artist reproducing the names of people encountered, places and events that occurred in her immediate vicinity during the year of the Berlin Wall’s collapse in 1989. A precise color code defines places from people and activities undertaken, resulting in a vibrant and abstract linear diagram.
The importance of this work comes from its place within a historical event that overturned global balances, as witnessed from the personal and individual perspectives of the people affected. Central to the research of Ann Noël is the social significance reflected in the intimate everyday, a notion which can be linked to her artistic ties to the Fluxus movement; accordingly, her work manages seamlessly to merge the spheres of life and art with harmony and charm.
Progressing inside the space, visitors are confronted with another critical work by the artist, YOU, from 1981. YOU is a work made from diverse graphic representations of the letter “i.” In a recent presentation at the ChertLüdde bookshop, Ann Noel spoke of these works as an act of ironic revenge against the prevailing chauvinist attitudes during her years at the California Institute of the Arts, where Noël worked as a supervisor for the graphic workshop.
“I did this project when I was in California, one because they are the most insignificant letter of the alphabet, is just a head and a body, but is also “I,” “me me me me,” all these art stars in California saying ‘I am the greatest,’ and I thought I would take them down from their pedestal, I would make them lower case…” (Ann Noël, 2022)
This work combines her passion for typography and graphic design, the artist’s intense participation in collective life and cultural development, her critique and fatigue towards male overrepresentation and pomposity, and the irony and lightness that characterizes her work. This selection of “i” comes from an original group of 406 drawings of the modest letter, styled in different typefaces using black ink on A3 paper. Installed in the space on wooden table plinths, the composition evokes the physicality of printing presses, the history of typographic design and Noël’s passion for different printing techniques.
All the works presented in the exhibition confront us with fragments, segments and moments shared with friends, artists and intellectuals of the Fluxus circle. For Noël, these very junctures and mechanisms are central to artistic creation; it is so that objects and memories, once imprinted on paper, become portraits, reminders of the people who speak or are spoken about, of the details of living that make art possible.
The poetry behind little details of life, small everyday gestures, affections and friendships, connections and moments of disconnection frame this exhibition’s core elements, which begins with a constitutive symbol: a key. Initially created in 1989 for the exhibition REFERENZEN at Karo Galerie in Berlin, this collage comprises photocopies of cut-out silver keys belonging to the artist; all are small but significant objects from Ann Noël’s life. Keys to her old office at Harvard, her home, car, apartments left behind, lockers, suitcases and mailboxes – these places and entities are bound by their purpose as containers of life, of experiences and memories, precious fragments to be held. This emblem of opening and closing, of keeping near or locking away, stirs up the potential Einzelheiten des Lebens in our own lives, as the exhibition title suggests. Moving between fragments and memories, this exhibition is realized thereby through artistic and day-to-day articulation.
Principal in the show is the wooden triptych Freundeskreis, dated from 1990-1991 and reexhibited in Berlin for the first time since then. Commissioned by the Berlin Senate for the Weltstattberlin exhibition inside the Alexanderplatz underground, the work consists of handwritten texts by the artist reproducing the names of people encountered, places and events that occurred in her immediate vicinity during the year of the Berlin Wall’s collapse in 1989. A precise color code defines places from people and activities undertaken, resulting in a vibrant and abstract linear diagram.
The importance of this work comes from its place within a historical event that overturned global balances, as witnessed from the personal and individual perspectives of the people affected. Central to the research of Ann Noël is the social significance reflected in the intimate everyday, a notion which can be linked to her artistic ties to the Fluxus movement; accordingly, her work manages seamlessly to merge the spheres of life and art with harmony and charm.
Progressing inside the space, visitors are confronted with another critical work by the artist, YOU, from 1981. YOU is a work made from diverse graphic representations of the letter “i.” In a recent presentation at the ChertLüdde bookshop, Ann Noel spoke of these works as an act of ironic revenge against the prevailing chauvinist attitudes during her years at the California Institute of the Arts, where Noël worked as a supervisor for the graphic workshop.
“I did this project when I was in California, one because they are the most insignificant letter of the alphabet, is just a head and a body, but is also “I,” “me me me me,” all these art stars in California saying ‘I am the greatest,’ and I thought I would take them down from their pedestal, I would make them lower case…” (Ann Noël, 2022)
This work combines her passion for typography and graphic design, the artist’s intense participation in collective life and cultural development, her critique and fatigue towards male overrepresentation and pomposity, and the irony and lightness that characterizes her work. This selection of “i” comes from an original group of 406 drawings of the modest letter, styled in different typefaces using black ink on A3 paper. Installed in the space on wooden table plinths, the composition evokes the physicality of printing presses, the history of typographic design and Noël’s passion for different printing techniques.
All the works presented in the exhibition confront us with fragments, segments and moments shared with friends, artists and intellectuals of the Fluxus circle. For Noël, these very junctures and mechanisms are central to artistic creation; it is so that objects and memories, once imprinted on paper, become portraits, reminders of the people who speak or are spoken about, of the details of living that make art possible.