Herbert MaierWer wir sind – Eine Visuelle Bibliothek

This is the visual library! Herbert Maier’s fascinating project is a successful attempt to think globally: it testifies to the availability of images, to the slowness of classical painting and to the passion for travelling and for collecting. The pictures with which Herbert Maier returns from all over the world are pictures that people have made of themselves and of others; they show human culture in all its facets, in its beauty and in its abysmal dimension. Faces, portraits, heads and masks – hardly any other motif has found its way more often into the history of art and culture across the globe; for behind every depiction of a human being, however stylised or however individually naturalistic its execution, lies the hope of capturing the quintessence of being human as such. Over many years Herbert Maier has travelled to the most varied places and regions: to Pakistan, India, Nepal, Mexico, Guatemala, the USA, Israel, Iran and the tribal areas of West Africa. His Visuelle Bibliothek is closely bound up with these journeys. The encounters with other people and the absorption of their artistic and cultural testimonies into his own imaginary store of images became just as important to him as his engagement with Western art history. Herbert Maier has been working on this encyclopaedia since 2009, and it now comprises more than 500 watercolours. Only the watercolour technique, distinguished by transparency and lightness, allow(ed) such a multitude of pictures to be produced in so short a time.

Exhibition:
Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg, 29/10/2016 – 26/2/2017