Signs, Gestures, Words Between Writing and Image

The Written Art Collection (pinakothek.de) is dedicated to artistic approaches adopted since 1945 that link language, writing and the image in three different cultural regions. The fascination with the phenomenon of writing in images is borne by the urge to reveal intercultural correlations between writing, drawing and painting. Expressive, abstract and spiritual elements in visual languages of the modern age – in Western Europe and the USA, in the Near and Middle East as well as in East Asia – are at the focus of attention. The exhibited works stimulate the imagination through their layers and combinations of signs, gestures and words. The boundaries between an individual experience and the collective memory, between a real and a fantasy language and between existing and utopian places become blurred and enable cross-cultural encounters.

With works by Etel Adnan, Maliheh Afnan, Siah Armajani, Mohammed Ehsai, Susan Hefuna, Rebecca Horn, Adam Pendleton, Morita Shiryū, Kazuo Shiraga, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Mark Tobey, Qiu Zhijie, Lawrence Weiner, Inoue Yūichi and Charles Hossein Zenderoudi, among others.

Curator: Oliver Kase and N.N.