cover in colors

cover in colors

different paths to the same destination

Gilbert Bretterbauer

Texts by gilbert bretterbauer, Katharina Hofmann-Sewera, Daniela Zyman

German / English, 176 pages plus 60 pages of watercolors, 21.6 × 29.6 cm, numerous color illustrations, softcover

April 2019

ISBN 978-3-903172-37-1

€ 26,00 [A]

€ 25,30 [D]

The farther Gilbert Bretterbauer advances in his world of texts and textiles, the more evident the timeliness of his work becomes. Textiles were once treated as ornamentation and decoration, but today Bretterbauer’s “textile thinking” (D. Zyman) is omnipresent, a desideratum of versatile, solution-oriented thinking in complex situations of socio- and ecopolitical conflict. It accepts the infinite entanglement and deceptive softness of its material, the ephemeral and fragmentary qualities of its design, the interminability of the processes set in motion. And the perception of these circumstances unravels the flowing, preliminary, ever-undoable and revocable axioms of his thinking and artistic practice. This is how Penelope entangled the rigid mindsets her antagonists in endless delay; and the “small” Lilliputians used their dexterity with needle and thread to transform Gulliver, if ever so briefly, into an amorphous lump. The mindful elegance of these methods of conceptual textile thought is perceived less and less nowadays—but we cannot afford to lose track of their vital importance.