ohne Titel

Karel Trinkewitz was a poet, typographer and creator of objects, who described all his works as collages. The work exhibited here, which bears neither title nor date, consists of small black, green and red notes that are packed in five plastic covers. All of these notes have a German word written in white on them. The allocation of words to the different colored pieces of paper is random. The viewers of the interactive work can assemble textual images from the letters, and create their own collages.

Trinkewitz does not want to tell stories in his works. He is far more interested in the question of how thoughts develop: "It seems to me that I have always intuitively tended […] towards a montage-like worldview. And in the same way towards an aesthetics of collages." [1] The essential requirement for creating a collage is the destruction of existing texts and/or images, as this is the only way to acquire the necessary material. Because this 'hacking' to bits of words, lines, texts, and pictures was essential for practicing his art, Trinkewitz dubbed himself »The Hacking Man from Bohemia.«[2]



[1] Karel Trinkewitz, »Meine Welt ist die Collage« [Fragment from the essay »Theorie der Kollage«], in »Karel Trinkewitz: Collagen und Objekte«, Karel Trinkewitz, ed. (Hamburg: Wullenweber Offsetdruck, 1989), p. 10. Translated from German.

[2] Gabriel Laub, »Der Aphoristiker«, in ibid., p. 7. Translated from German.