Brigitte Waldach ― Bleierne Zeit/Leaden Time

"When I read, I see pictures, and when I draw, I see texts. I cannot conceive one domain without the other," Brigitte Waldach (b. Berlin, 1966; lives and works in Berlin) says about her approach to art, which, she believes, grew out of her education--she received her training as an artist while also studying German literature. The title of the book, "Leaden Time," refers to Margarethe von Trotta's 1981 film of the same title, from which Brigitte Waldach took the story of the terrorist Gudrun Ensslin and translated it into her own art. After numerous drawings revolving around the Baader-Meinhof Gang, most of them in red gouache and red pigment pen, she started in 2011 to make graphite and lead pencils--and hence, in a sense, lead as a material as well--the basis of her visual worlds. In terms of motifs, her work also draws inspiration from Lars von Trier's movies and David Foster Wallace's writings. Letters and text no longer operate on the level of content, conveying information, but instead become a pictorial form in their own right. While working on her large-format drawings on laid paper, Waldach frequently also creates art in three dimensions, as in her installation for the German federal parliament. Waldach's work allows us to discover a new iconography of time between film, image, symbol, and language. With essays by Uta Grosenick and Gregor Jansen.