(EN) PERM MILLENNIAL
Jorinde Voigt
„Perm Millennial“
Fahnemann Projects, Berlin
June 6th - July 21st 2007
by Andrew Cannon
Fahnemann Projects is proud to present ‘Perm Millennial’, the first complete solo showing of the work of artist Jorinde Voigt at the gallery.
In ‘Perm Millennial’, Voigt makes reference to a time ‘before history’ - a time of the absence of written records, where terms, names and labels float arbitrarily. Prehistory if you like, is therefore anonymous, leaving precise definition open to argument and discussion. This state of openness ( a vulnerability) was soon counteracted by the formation of structures that swiftly became belief systems for a mankind, wishing to transcend its pre-historic state. These systems, alongside religion, involved mathematics, geometry and science. Armed with these belief structures, patterns were discerned and noted and it was the evidence and ‘exhibition’ of pattern that became synonymous with the confirmation of spirituality and of there being an “order of things”1. In ‘Perm Millennial’, Voigt seems to put emphasis on the demarcation between the non-written and the written. Within this context, the drawings act as notations. History is history because it is written so, it is our effort to become civilised.
However, unlike society’s thinkers that worked through structures to reach the parameters of our natural world, Voigt sets out the parameters first and allows the structures or compositions to unfurl and emerge within them. It is not surprising then, that pieces such as ‘2 küssen sich (zu 2 Seiten)’ remind us of the shape of a windstorm or the structure of a bird’s wing, since in setting her parameters, Voigt takes influence from various formulas such as Leonardo Di Pisa’s ‘Fibonacci number’, that he originally applied in understanding the growth and multiplication of the natural world.
In Voigt’s ‘Pfeile’ series, a similar idea of both progression and entropy is communicated, as an initial arrow pointing up the page duplicates and multiplies until the spectator is the witness of a consequent, powerful flow. Sometimes the parameters set for these drawings mean that these flows turn in on themselves, forms balls of energy or criss –cross across each other as atoms bounce within matter. Into these visual systems, Voigt introduces airborne craft such as eagles
and aeroplanes that disturb and alter airspace and volume and speeding sports cars that command the surface of the earth in accelerated lineal strips. Voigt often controls these forceful elements with what seems like random time-based mechanisms such as rhythmic structures of famous pop songs or systems of increasing or decreasing temperature (‘O.T – Temperaturverlauf’).
In contrast to the earlier presentations of work by Jorinde Voigt, that proposed a sort of contained visual algebra, the drawings in‘Perm Millennial’ have increased in complexity and depth. Notations can now be found outside the focus of the drawing, guiding the viewer to understand the mechanisms at work.
It is her seemingly peculiar choice of combining elements and systems that give Voigt’s drawings their originality and particular language and in turn deliver their own commanding effect on the viewer.
Andrew Cannon
1 As brought up to date in ‘The Order Of Things’ (Les Mots et les choses), Michel Foucault Pub.1966