bureaucracy meets ecstasy – karin sander: office works, editorial design, berlin, 2018

the title tells it as it is. all the materials used in this group of works derive from the banal reality of everyday office life, conventionally perceived as dull. the artist‘s office works are exactly what they say they are, comprising humdrum objects like paper clips, odd snippets of paper, self-adhesive labels and sticky coloured dots. stapler, scissors and glue is all it takes to make something. the something in this case being 1,537 drawings over 26 years, catalogued chronologically – some full-size – over 704 pages. the sequence is choreographed so that the works, viewed en masse, unfold their subtle, understated charms to quietly powerful effect. the images are displayed in a grid layout, in reduced size; where an individual drawing is reproduced full-size this interrupts the grid – which then resumes on the page after the full-scale image. the objects are photographed with a raking light, so that the surfaces of the a4 size sheets take on a 3d quality – labels, sticky tape and folds appearing in relief like topographical features.

karin sander: office works
editorial design
berlin, 2018

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