Gabriela Oberkofler: Api etoile: A Growing Archive

The bean is the star and the book is telling us a lot about Ecological Seeding, Gardening, and Solidarity Farming. And then, in an inimitable way, the artist draws an inner program of the collected as well as the stored. For a while now, Gabriela Oberkofler has been making use of fine-tipped pens when drawing. They offer light-resistant inks. They were also used in the series Pflanzenpalaver. The pens allow for very closely spaced lines to be drawn in a compact arrangement. Extremely delicate textures can be achieved in this way, inviting the viewers to take a close look and immerse themselves in all the graphic abbreviations. It’s almost as if one were to lose oneself in them, as if one were being absorbed into the dynamic hatching and richly detailed structures of lines that are on display. And because nothing–neither objects nor plants, neither insects nor rhizomes of the mushrooms–is defined by contours but instead exclusively by various shaped surface structures, the drawings simultaneously acquire a painterly appearance.