For the work series pizzicato the artist Leni Hoffmann (*1962) uses a setting from everyday life: the local newspaper. She began her ongoing work group in 1997 and released it for the first time 2002 in the Essen daily WAZ. Further pizzicati followed: 2007 in Berlin’s Tagesspiegel and 2009 Cologne’s Stadtanzeiger. For her endless drawings the artist uses the four basic colors of offset printing and allows the colors to flow across the paper of the roll production run. While in a dialogue with the mechanical process, the paper moves on, continuously creating new unforeseen combinations of the color scale. The radiant, animated lines in cyan, yellow, magenta, and black are in each single copy, but their shape is as unpredictable and diverse as the events making up the news. The work title, pizzicato_42, recalls the musical pizzicato. The resulting unique copy enriches and disturbs our usual way of looking. To mark the 25th birthday of the Ludwig Forum, its new director Andreas Beitin has invited Hoffmann to add to the work group.
Just before the anniversary exhibition is opened, Leni Hoffmann will ‘perform’ her pizzicato in the Aachener Nachrichten. Together with the cooperative workers, Andreas Beitin, and the Aachen paper, a work of art for everyone will be produced during the four-hour printing process on the night of June 29-30. The buyers of the paper will be able to enjoy the unexpected surprise of holding a fresh-off-the-press unique copy and work of art in their hands. In the spirit of one of the fundamental ideas of the avant-garde, Hoffmann combines art and life to form a unity.
In cooperation with: Aachener Zeitungsverlag
With the kind support of: Peter und Irene Ludwig Stiftung, Torsten Möller Artservice & Tube
Aachener Nachrichten / Aachener Zeitung
Release 06/30/2016
Illustration: Leni Hoffmann, Pizzicato, Photo: Manuel Franke © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016.
