REALISED WORK SERIES / INSTALLATION2021

LITERARY
FROTTAGE

Writing is reduced to line and pressure until language becomes a field of rhythm, density and material resistance.

CONCEPT

Horizontal pencil lines are drawn across a large, irregular sheet of paper. A spirit level keeps each line straight, while pressure, spacing and graphite density continually change.

The repeated marks recall lines of writing without forming words. What appears to be text has withdrawn from immediate legibility; language remains as structure, duration and physical trace.

The work moves between drawing, writing and frottage. The paper registers the movement of the hand and the resistance of its surface, turning the act of inscription into a material landscape.

Frontal installation view of Literary Frottage without the ladder — Literary Frottage · frontal view · 2021 · Photo: Toni Kleinlercher

Close view of graphite lines and paper seams in Literary Frottage — Graphite lines and paper seams · 2021 · Photo: Toni Kleinlercher

TEXT ON THE WORK

After Gisela Steinlechner, mind the gap, 2022

WRITING TRANSFERRED INTO TRACE

Gisela Steinlechner describes Kleinlercher's Literary Frottage as a field of horizontal pencil lines in which repetition produces a map-like landscape. Taking Ernst Herbeck's poetry collection Alexander as its source, Kleinlercher translates every word and punctuation mark into a drawn line. Language is not negated; it is transferred into duration, touch and material trace.

The joined sheets of de-sized stamp paper, their seams, tears and undulations, and the palimpsest-like wall beneath them all enter the drawing as active structures. Through the laborious emptying-out of writing, the work opens poetry towards the dimension of the no-longer-written: everything remains contained, while nothing is directly referred to.