gazing beyond a floor
solnhofen lime stone floor tiles sanded as lithography stones
2022
the floor of the exhibition rooms of the artists' gallery is made of solnhofen slab lime. this is a dense, cream-, ocher- and yellow-colored stone that appears brownish, grayish or reddish in places. due to the biogenic origin of the stone, fossils of deposited organisms can be found in its grain again and again, which testify to the formerly tropically warm shallow sea in today's southern germany. the slabs to be seen in the installation were originally used as floor tiles, skirting boards or stair treads and were processed into printable lithographic stones by specific grinding. this is a flat printing technique based on the stone's special ability to absorb grease and water in equal measure. this is a potential that underlies the entire exhibition floor. on some of the reworked stones - due to the printing principle - mirrored word formations of the french philosopher duo gilles deleuze and félix guattari can be found, as well as their own new creations, which were developed based on the context of the development of the shown plates. in their eco-social theory of production, deleuze and guattari developed a critique of the traditional notion of the subject, which for them was inseparable from relations of domination and central to contemporary theories of new materialisms. among other things, the present could only be made receptive to future events in the idea of a continuous becoming. as lithographic stones, the stones of the installation symbolize the artistic process and thus emphasize a becoming that was inherent in the plates even before the sedimentation of the organisms of the jurassic sea.
