Wit Stwosz
There are a couple of used book shops in Berlin that I frequent. Their content runs the gammut from expensive art books & exhibition cataglogs, to cheapo paperbacks, to well-preserved German textbooks and literature. I love having this kind of variety and I’ve found that the most economical way to shop is to luck into an exhibition catalog at the cheapo paperback shop, or to find a bunch of paperbacks taking up space in the used literature store. The exhibtion catalog that would cost 25€ in art-focused bookstore is only 2,50€ in the paperback shop.
Which brings me to this amazing book.
Wit Stwosz (more info here) was a sculptor born sometime before 1450 near Stuttgart and is best known for creating the altarpiece for St. Mary’s Basilica in Kraków between 1477 and 1489. This monograph is wonderfully oversized and filled with incredible photos that I am so excited to make some collages with.
I’m excited to see what happens when I bring these images together with some of the Madonnas from this book I wrote a bit about here. Paraphrasing what I said in that post, some clever cropping and these images become near-abstract interplays of light and dark, with just enough of a reference to a face or a hand to get the viewer curious about what’s going on.
I also want to properly scan all these images so that they’re preserved somewhere other than in my studio. I don’t know what I’d do with the scans. I don’t much care for digital collage but I’d love them to exist somewhere accessible to more people (to the seven who would care).
I have one collage project I’m working on before I’ll start using these images, but keep your eyes on this space for developments. I’m really excited to make and share some new work.