Paul Good, Stefan SteinerMein Heraklit

To this day Heraclitus gives us no rest. How could he, who sees at work in everything that exists something tirelessly differentiating within itself, something in a state of change! He vindicates the flowing, the most fleeting, the contest of all things. From popular speech, from poetry and the arts, his voice still resounds, visionary, into our fast-moving world. Paul Good’s new translation presents his discourse of wisdom for the first time in lines of words. In this way the paratactic rhythm of this aphoristic form becomes visible and palpable. On the trail of an “inextinguishably uncreated real,” of a branch of first sunlight. Paul Good, born in Mels (Switzerland), was professor of philosophy at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1983 to 2007, having taken his doctorate on Merleau-Ponty in Munich in 1970 and his habilitation on the philosophy of language in St. Gallen in 1973. A research assignment in Berkeley was followed, until his appointment to Düsseldorf, by numerous teaching posts at the university, the teacher training college and the grammar school in St. Gallen and Bern. Since his retirement in 2007 he has maintained a philosophy studio in Bad Ragaz. In the jointly conceived artist’s book, Stefan Steiner sets blocks of his watercolours alongside Paul Good’s translations. The painter writes of them: “The ancient Greeks have no word for blue. With a simple gesture watercolour is applied to a sheet of Japanese paper. For each watercolour the colour is mixed anew. The hue lies somewhere between ultramarine blue and cobalt blue. The grain direction of the paper is – horizontal. The paper reacts to the moisture, it throws up creases. As it dries the colour gathers between the creases. Something happens. Selecting. The grain direction of the printed paper is – vertical.” Stefan Steiner was born in Zug (Switzerland) and was a master student of Günther Uecker at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1988 to 1992. He lives and works in Köln. Alongside numerous solo exhibitions, his works have repeatedly been shown in the context of the artist’s book and of paper.