Selections Winter 2003: Mappings of Being

Selections Winter 2003: Mappings of Being presented the drawings of three emerging artists who explored visual and philosophical approaches to mapping as a way to position oneself in the world: Maria Bussmann (New York/Germany), Christoph Fink (Belgium), and Bogdan Hoffmann (Germany). Bogdan Hoffmann made schematic black and white colored landscapes and maps that first seemed to tell little about the cities being depicted. However, upon taking a closer look, his images unsettled the conventional function of a map as an abstraction of a geographical place. For The Drawing Center, Hoffmann created new work that represented his travels across the Atlantic between New York and Bremen, Germany. The artistic practice of Christoph Fink is accumulative, with Fink lining the gallery walls with hundreds of hand-written notes, photographs, sound recordings, carbon paper drawings, paper cut-outs, and maps in an attempt to describe everything he experiences during his travels on foot, by plane, by train, and by car, thereby highlighting the transience of existence. Maria Bussmann addressed the failure of language to connect with one's observations of nature. Her whimsical drawings mapped her reading of and engagement with Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Integrating her own personal and idiosyncratic vocabulary, her drawings make visible Wittgenstein's attempt to draw the limit of thought.

Accompanying Mappings of Being was an edition of the Drawing Papers, number 41 in a series of publications devoted to drawing. The publication contained an essay by Susette Min, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Exhibitions, statements by each artist in the exhibition, and images of each artist's work.