Proxy 38 and Proxy 38-over the edge

Proxy 38 and Proxy 38-over the edge were created during the 2021 Artist Residency at FRIAS (Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies) and 2022 at that Institute.

Excerpt from the catalog text ‘Is sustainability close or far, colorful or black and white?’, published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at T66 Kulturwerk Freiburg in January 2024.

"How does Katrin von Lehmann approach the topic of sustainability with her special technique? In Proxy 38, the artist integrated her direct physical environment. Alternating her left and right hands, she drew on the wall of her Freiburg studio – an unused room in the FRIAS Institute –thus disengaging her drawing from a paper support. Already within the limitations of a sheet of paper on a drawing table, the Proxy Drawing Technique is a body-related, performative act. When drawing DNA bases, the artist moved around the table in order to work from all directions. The procedure of applying colored pencil lines with alternating hands onto the dimensions of an eight-meter-long, static and frontal wall demands the entire body. For Proxy 38, von Lehmann worked with six boxes of pencils. Although the artist does not transfer any tangible motifs into a drawing, the experimental Proxy Drawing Technique nevertheless leads to surprisingly concrete forms. We perceive clusters of lines, circular fields and knots, entangled strokes, stimulating overlaps and intersections. Squareshaped empty spaces stand out: created by blank leftover pieces of paper which the artist fixed to the wall, drew over, and then removed."

Dr. Anja Gerdemann, Director Galerie Stihl Waiblingen