image source: edition fink

Notes

64 full-page facsimiles, drawing pad with cover sheet, 4 text booklets as supplements

Publisher Note

The publication “WARUM ETWAS IST” (Why Something Is) contains a group of 64 drawings that were created between 2011 and 2012. The original-size reproductions of Christian Vetter’s works follow his turn to writing, to the letter as a structural element and the increasingly radical departure from the representational and figurative, which the artist has made in his paintings in recent years.
Christian Vetter is interested in the question of the linguistic nature of art. However, the drawings at hand deceive us by suggesting that the text is the actual content of the picture: this somewhat strangely constructed writing, the sometimes incorrect spelling, the omission of strokes that would make a letter complete, make it difficult to read, so that attention is drawn to the gesture, the performative aspect of the drawing.
With this works I am exploring the question of the extent to which painting and drawing are language. That they are language is an assertion that comes from my own practice, from the experience of painting, in that I have noticed that I think through painting or, even more so, in painting. And if painting can be a means of thinking, then I assume that painting must be language. (Christian Vetter)

Artists’ Book

WARUM ETWAS IST

by Christian Vetter

Publisher
Release Place Zurich, Switzerland
Release Date 2013
Credits
Designer: Georg Rutishauser
Printrun 500
Identifiers
ISBN-13: 978-3-03746-165-5 (A)
Format softcover
Dimensions 21.0 × 29.7 cm
Pages 160
Technique Offset Printing