ETYM
DRAWINGS
Language is translated into movement and line. The artist establishes the conditions; oscillation, gravity and rhythm determine the trace.
LANGUAGE
BECOMES TRACE
Etymdrawings are based on entries from Toni Kleinlercher's travel diary Eiweißschaum aus allen Pornotoren. The text uses intralingual substitutions developed in response to Michel Leiris's Glossaire j'y serre mes gloses and to the concept of the “etym”.
Rather than guiding the drawing instrument directly by hand, Kleinlercher suspends a pen, pencil or brush from a cord. He sets the construction in motion while concentrating on the rhythm of the spoken diary entry. Oscillation, gravity and the material resistance of the instrument determine the resulting marks.
The drawings operate as transpositions of text into another form of notation. By inserting distance between hand and line, the artist withdraws individual handwriting without surrendering the work entirely to chance.
A FIELD OF
21 DRAWINGS
LINES AS
ANOTHER SCRIPT
CONDITIONS
FOR A TRACE
In his opening address for the 2015 exhibition, writer Christian Steinbacher situated the works within Kleinlercher's long-standing engagement with procedural transformation. The drawing instrument is not guided directly. Instead, the artist establishes a situation in which speech, motion and material produce a trace whose precise form remains open.
The work connects travel, diary writing, linguistic substitution, performance and drawing. What began as a journey and its textual record returns years later as a field of suspended, seismographic lines.
Edited summary after Christian Steinbacher, opening address for etymdrawings, MAERZ, 8 August 2015.
THE WORK
IN SPACE
ZEICHEN | WORTE | KÖRPER, Kulturschloss Reichenau, Reichenau an der Rax, Austria
etymdrawing, G.A.S. – station, Tankstelle für Kunst und Impuls, Berlin, Germany
etymdrawings
Drawing series and performative process
Ink, pencil and brush on paper; suspended drawing instruments; spoken text
Eiweißschaum aus allen Pornotoren, travel diary by Toni Kleinlercher
2015–2025