Blei
Nanne Meyer

Available on Apple Books

28 Pages
14 x 20 cm
b/w Photocopy
First Edition 2022
100 Copies

www.nannemeyer.de

The Blei heads are multi-layered drawings that bring together different levels of drawing and time. I applied a thin layer of white paint to randomly printed drawings of mine, so-called misprints, which were produced during the production of one of my books, and drew faces on them, the physiognomy of which partly followed the traces shimmering through them, but also differed from them again. After lying around for a while, I covered these drawings with a soft pencil in order to create new heads in the interplay of exposure and compression, in which the mistakes, aberrations and deposits of the previous drawing processes are inscribed. The residue and leftovers, which now only shimmer through the outer skin as a hunch, are the memory of the drawing and shape the expression of the faces that light up from their dark surroundings: memories that have taken shape, there and not there, impenetrable and permeable at the same time.

Blei (Köpfe), 2011/12, 45 drawings, dispersion paint, pencil and colored pencil on waste paper (misprints), each 29.5 x 24.8cm

Nanne Meyer's artwork is directly linked to her own personal process of seeing, experiencing and reflecting upon the world, mediated through an experimental sensibility. Already during her studies, in the 1970s, Meyer placed an emphasis on working in the drawing medium, seeking out connections to the activities of thinking and writing. In making small-format booklets as well as extensive series of drawings she investigates forms of interplay between language and image.

Emerging from the gestures of writing and from an associative understanding of forms, Meyer developed the "Wandlung" series of large format graphite drawings, for which she first became recognized. The German term "Wandlung" or "Transformation", represents a principle of the process-based, the transformative, the fleeting, the unstable, which recurs throughout Meyer's body of work. These are generally divided into thematically linked work-groups made up of small-format series, large-format drawings, as well as artist books and pamphlets.

Nanne Meyer is the recipient of many grants and awards, including the Villa Massimo Rome and the Hannah Höch Prize, Berlin. From 1994 to 2016 she taught at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee. Meyer lives and works in Berlin.