Putting Things In Order - rubber stamps in drawer

Putting Things In Order

On-site created notes, poems and drawings could be exchanged with works of other visitors
1998
Munich/Freiburg/Other locations
2 shows: exhibition history

"I see an image of the sea and think of swimming. You see the same image and think of drowning. They see the same image and think of fish. He looks at the same image and thinks of oil-drilling… Yes, there also were some photos of shores and waves in that pile I left in one of the drawers…" Iris Häussler
 

A room in a public art gallery. Two chairs and two stools. A table with four drawers. Three of the four drawers contained about twenty rubber stamps each, collections of words describing emotional human states, coordinates of place and time, terms for family relationships. Photographs were placed in the fourth drawer, mostly black and white pictures of abandoned rooms and traces of human interactions, titled on the back as if they were once part of a family-archive. Stamp pads, stacks of paper and pencils were offered on the table. Some visitors left a personal letter, a note, a story about something they could never share with the person it was meant for. Others shared their views on life, their current moods or else by using the stamps to create a sketch, write a poem or just leave the imprint of their fingers. 

Kunstverein Freiburg, 
Germanisches Nationalmuseum Nürnberg, 
Kunstverein Braunschweig, 
Kunsthalle zu Kiel, 
Kunstsammlung Gera, Germany. 1999
ISART Gallery, München, Germany