Scholarglyphs

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Deskxistence - New York Scholarglyphs
by Ottjörg A.C.

During his stay in New York City Ottjörg A.C. will search for and take prints of school desks, carved, scratched and tagged by students at least 9 schools, all in different neighborhoods and all to become part of “Deskistence - New York Scholarglyphs”. Ottjörg A.C. will take prints from six desks of each school that he will work with. To take the prints of each desk Ottjörg will use a roll of intaglio paper at a printmaking workshop in NYC.

Ottjörg works by collecting facts and renders them as works of art. “Artwork has always been fundamentally reproducible. Things created by human beings can always be reproduced by human beings”(Walter Benjamin). Ottjörgs etching method exemplifies the continuation of historical painting. They carry within them the character of documentation and the absorption of Zeitgeist. His work is a cullmination of significant experiences that shaped him as an artist, such as witnessing the student and poplular upraising during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 and living under the shadow of the Berlin Wall.

Recently, on January 27th, at the Atelier Paulista in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Ottjörg A.C. presented his latest work entitled, Scholarglyphs Sao Paulo. This part of the artist's work entitled Deskxistence was achieved in cooperation with the Atelier Paulista and 10 schools in different Sao Paulo neighborhoods. After living and working for 3 months in Sao Paulo, he is now on his way to New York City to continue his Deskxistence project.

Before going to Sao Paulo, Ottjörg A.C. was finishing up work on part of the Deskxistence project called Alphabet Road. A journey that brought him from Berlin/Germany to Vienna/Austria through the Balkan States Sarajevo/Bosnia-Herzegovina and Skopje/Macedonia to Istanbul/Turkey, which represents - through the Bosporus bridge – the connection between Europe and Asia. The
trip lead him to one cradle of Central European culture, to Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories and finally to Egypt . Ottjörg says of his travels that, “In my eyes, culture always flowers when people achieve a synthesis of influences and ideas from people with different origins, religions and ethnic background as well as various conceptions”. On his way Ottjörg saw cities with historical experiences, which on the one hand are examples of prosperousness, cohabitation, but on the other show the effects of regression and destruction through discrimination and social ostracism.

Scratching/Etching is a phenomenon that exisits in all cultures. People from all over the world leave very personal signs on surfaces of all kinds. With the aim of finding an artistic and cultural based synthesis, Ottjörg A.C. is looked for these special signs on the school desks of students all over the world. His trips are incredibly successful and the results are amazing.

Ottjörg A.C. has given lectures at various schools and Universities.
Deskxistence, opens up a novel way to view the scratches on the surfaces of desks normally only regarded as aspects of vandalism and destruction. The intaglio color prints let us discover their poetic parts and their value as a communicational interface. That’s exceptional in a time, when the public interest is on spotlighting the violence happening in our schools.

The focus of Ottjörg´s interest on New York Scholarglyphs is on one hand the way the desktops of New York City differ from the desktops of other cities, those visited during Alphabet Road and in Sao Paulo, by the ethnical and social background of the neighborhoods of NYC. On the other hand he wants to investigate the commonalities displayed by the prints. Ottjörg A.C. has always been driven by what makes human, living on the same globe, living in the same city, having some common needs.


*This project is sponsored by freeDimensional, The Carlton Arms Hotel, ArtBreak Gallery and Hahnemühle fine Arts paper. This project is in part funded by a generous grant from the Brooklyn Arts Council and by the Berlin Senate Cultural Affairs Department.