From the Exhibition Catalogue
NETs. Weaving Webs in Art. 2014

Asking what constitues knowledge, truth and understanding is always a question of context and point of view.For Eine Kritik (a Critique), from her series Überschreibungen (Transcriptions), Julia Schmid has selected slightly distortet canvases, which we perceive differently according to where they are situated within the space and where the viewer stands. The artist took Immanuel Kant´s Critique of Practical Reason (originally published in German in 1788)- a book whose content has increasingly become collective knowledge- and over a period of four months she transcribed the text in pen and ink onto canvases. The lines of the transcriptions run vertically and have been written over up to seven times; the rhythm between lines and spaces mirrors the chapters of the book. The letters´ascenders and descenders break out oft he finely woven graphic mesh- a delicate conglomeration that no longer communicates knowledge and, in ist overall effect, reminds us of calligraphic masterpieces of the past. Eine Kritik (A Critique) strikes us as paradigmatic for a society whose growth is constantly accelerating, while at the same time it is continually increasing, displacing or replacing collections of data, thereby implying that there is a gain in knowledge, whereas actually the sheer quantity of data has merely made the processes of finding meaning, learning and comprehension more difficult.