TRIBUTE TO CORNERS. STATTBERLIN.BERLIN. 2012

Exhibition Text by Delphine Marinier and Peter Krilles

Julia Schmid, Hölderlin. Hyperion, 2012
Paper, India ink, medium density fiberboard, Varnish, Audio, 215x45x30 cm

Julia Schmid is a German artist based in Berlin. At first glance, her works Überschreibungen look like dense and indecipherable manuscripts. In the shown work, it is the result of a tireless exercise of systematic copying word for word and lines on lines Hölderlin’s famous work Hyperion on parchment paper. Julia’s Überschreibungen may also be the result of a quest for a deeper affective and intellectual contact with the original text.
In his work One-Way Street, Walter Benjamin mentions the art of copying: “The power of a text is different when it is read from when it is copied out. […] Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of daydreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command. […]”
Regardless of any interpretation, trying to decode Julia’s manuscript will make the observer experience some renewed visual sensations and emotions. This fine art piece can be appreciated primarily or solely for his imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual effects.