[...] Drawing as art criticism
Is it possible to employ a visible medium in order to approach the works of other artists, to reflect and comment on them, like the linguistic discourse of the art critic ? Drawing certainly possesses the necessary degree of abstraction for this task. Its closeness to writing enables it to formulate statements about artworks without currying favour with their authors. Katharina Meldner overlaps the contours of key works of recent art history. The artworks and their significant shapes appear like spectres, overlapping, standing out and receding once again with their different coloured lines. Christelle Franc has also made advancing and receding pictorial information into the theme of her drawings. On transparent papers, as layers covering picture panels, words and lines are interwoven in front of and behind one another to form incorporeal images. In each case, their starting and reference point is a concrete, succinct book of work comprising pictures and notes. A network of comparative perspectives is woven between the book and the picture panels. Reduction to contours in Meldner's work, the overlapping of fragmentary images and concepts in Franc's case: these processes correspond to Markus Tarkawian's working method based on pattern images. He appropriates the artworks of others ironically, by quickly reducing them to their essentials using simple outlines, caricature-like, and transposing the resulting drawing into the future. He foresees the artwork that has not yet been produced, extending the work of the art critic - as a drawing prophet - into the future. [...]