Galerie Crone Berlin invites you to the book launch Playing with Ludwig / Jouer avec Ludwig by Nikolaus Gansterer & Klaus Speidel on Saturday January the 21st at 4 pm. As part of the exhibition “Strange Wor(l)ds” by the artist Nikolaus Gansterer, there will be an artist talk between him and the philosopher Klaus Speidel.
Image above: Nikolaus Gansterer, I don’t know suddenly this wor(l)d seems strange to me, 2022, Courtesy Galerie Crone, Berlin Wien, Photo: Nikolaus Gansterer
How do colours relate to memory? How does language relate to the world (and vice versa)? Can the invisible, such as thoughts, atmospheres or pain, be grasped through art? Artist Nikolaus Gansterer and philosopher Klaus Speidel discuss these and similar questions in the newly published book Playing with Ludwig /Jouer avec Ludwig, published by Editions Dilecta and Centre d‘art contemporain Les Tanneries. Taking Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations as their starting point, Gansterer and Speidel have developed various works and formats, talking, drawing, assembling or doing all at the same time. Rather than just presenting results, the book documents the joint working process in numerous transcripts, which also reflect the genesis of the book itself. The work opens with a conversation featuring the book’s designer Grégoire Romanet, where the first graphic ideas are discussed. It ends with the dialogue „How to close a book”, which prepares the final series of images. Exhibition photographs and works from the first exhibition documenting the research project Figures de pensée at the Centre d’art contemporain Les Tanneries have been annotated, continued or completed in drawings. Different styles and methodologies, which unfold in the chapters of the book, correspond to different themes in Wittgenstein’s work. In the series “Philosophical Deviations”, Nikolaus Gansterer draws on various paragraphs of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, finding different forms and methods. Gansterer explains: “It’s important to say that none of these drawings are illustrations. I try to record how the text operates within me, how it influences my ways of thinking and feeling and then to take this movement as a springboard for drawing. It’s not so much about what is being said, but how it moves a reader.”
At the centre of the book stand the paragraphs of the Philosophical Investigations themselves, to which the various works and conversations in the book refer, annotated in writing and drawing by Klaus Speidel. Memories of Colour, Just imagine a Rod and Now as One Thing, Now as Another are based on collections of hues, rods, and boxes (respectively). As Speidel, who obtained a PhD in philosophy from Sorbonne University, explains: „For me as a philosopher, our project is really about questioning our trust in philosophical abstractions. We are far too often sure to understand some concept, but totally fail if we ever try to find the corresponding concretion, for instance the objects in the world that fit them or to even just make a drawing. This failure can in itself convey new insights in the sense of what Wittgenstein called ‚going against the frontiers of language’. Art-making can in this respect inform and compliment philosophical research.” Finally, the title-giving series, „Playing with Ludwig“ refers to a performative experimental set-up in which the philosopher and the artist sit opposite each other and describe, discuss, criticise or develop selected remarks by Wittgenstein in drawings, with objects and language games.
In the context of Nikolaus Gansterer‘s exhibition Strange Wor(l)ds at Galerie Crone Berlin, Fasanenstrasse 29, a book presentation in collaboration with Motto Books will take place on 21 January 2023. The afternoon begins at 4 pm with a discussion between Nikolaus Gansterer, Klaus Speidel and the drawing expert Jan-Philipp Frühsorge. Afterwards, Gansterer and Speidel invite you to the first Berlin Language Game Lab, in which they will work with drawings and objects based on a remark by Ludwig Wittgenstein, resulting in an installation that takes up the methodology of Playing with Ludwig. Galerie Crone, Motto Books and Editions Dilecta cordially invite you to attend.
About the book
Playing with Ludwig / Jouer avec Ludwig
Nikolaus Gansterer & Klaus Speidel
Editions Dilecta and Centre d’art Les Tanneries
About the exhibition
Nikolaus Gansterer, “Strange Wor(l)ds”
Galerie Crone Berlin
from Saturday, 21 January to Saturday, 4 March 2023 (Tue – Sat 11 am – 6 pm)
www.artatberlin.com
WHEN?
Saturday, 21 January 2023, from 4:00 to 5:30 pm
WHERE?
Crone Berlin
Fasanenstrasse 29
10719 Berlin-Charlottenburg
