Hinrich Sachs
Hinrich Sachs was born in Osnabrück, Germany, in 1962. He lives and works in Basel.
Acting on several platforms at the same time, in the spotlight and as a voice-over, Hinrich Sachs interprets the world in the signs of countless languages, including many that we read with him visually more than we understand.
Since 1992, for example, in the series Muttersprache [Mother Tongue], he has been painting watercolors that, in subtle proximity to the originals, reproduce the illustrated covers of children's language textbooks. The iconography of reading and writing shows letters of the alphabet as toys or living beings, or has the writing utensil grow into an organic pencil tree. Silently, text and image begin to converse about language. […]
The simultaneity of several sign systems in the works of Hinrich Sachs is reminiscent of “l’imaginaire des langues” by the poet and philosopher Édouard Glissant (1928–2011): anyone who writes today is no longer alone in one language—his or her own—, but is aware of the presence of all the world’s other languages, including all those that are not understood and remain obscure. Meanings can arise from the vibrant relationships between different languages and ways of speaking. Hinrich Sachs’s works are models of his comprehensive poetics of connection.
— Courtesy Hans Rudolf Reust
Available works
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Exhibitions
Documentation about Hinrich Sachs
Biography
Texts & press
Skopia, « On doit exposer sa vie pour la liberté (Don Quichotte) », 2010 (French)
Skopia, « On doit exposer sa vie pour la liberté (Don Quichotte) », 2010 (English)
Skopia, « On doit exposer sa vie pour la liberté (Don Quichotte) », 2010 (German)
Inge Hinterwaldner, « Kneten, Modellieren, Formen », 2007 (German)
Barny Drabble, « Trading Places. Art and Global Economics », 2001 (English)
Selected Publications
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