Barbara Schmidt Heins, Year 1979 (1979)
Barbara Schmidt Heins, Year 1979 (1979)
Barbara Schmidt Heins, Year 1979 (1979)
Barbara Schmidt Heins
Year 1979, 1979

Paperwork: Barbara Schmidt Heins & Gabriele Schmidt Heins

April 27 – August 31, 2018
FAHRBEREITSCHAFT, Berlin

Opening: April 24, 2018, 7 – 9 pm
Gallery Weekend: April 27 – 29, 2018, 12 – 6 pm

Curated by Konstantin Haubrok

Barbara and Gabriele Schmidt Heins, participants in Documenta 6 and 7, created a huge set of one-of-a-kind books in the 1970s. Each book is handmade, with medium and material treated individually in each case. Treatment of the books ranged from a neatly dissected part of a book spine to torn and reglued individual pages that were bound again back to front; and from the formal examination of the dimensions of a standard din a4 sheet of paper to rough copies removed from their binding and obscured with viscous paint.

The book works of Barbara and Gabriele Schmidt Heins are, however, not created through teamwork, despite fostering this impression at first glance. Instead, each book signifies an individual contemplation of the medium and its nature, probing the objective and the subjective, the formal and the playful, the process and its representation.

The works 1 hour, subjective / objective (Gabriele Schmidt Heins, 1976) and Year 1979 (Barbara Schmidt Heins, 1979) thus form the nucleus of this exhibition, along with a book work featuring an alleged golden section held up against the real golden section.

I’m very excited that the works of both of these wonderful artists are being publicly displayed again after such a long time. A big thank you not only to Barbara and Gabriele Schmidt Heins but also to Monika Branicka and the gallery ZAK Branicka who made this exhibition possible, as well as Sarah Lehnerer and Frank Hauschildt for their valuable support.

Konstantin Haubrok

paperwork: Barbara Schmidt Heins & Gabriele Schmidt Heins, Installation view
paperwork: Barbara Schmidt Heins & Gabriele Schmidt Heins, Installation view
paperwork: Barbara Schmidt Heins & Gabriele Schmidt Heins, Installation view
paperwork:
Barbara Schmidt Heins & Gabriele Schmidt Heins
Installation view
Barbara Schmidt Heins, untitled (Ripped pages out of the binding of a book and newly bound them mirror-inverted along the opposite long sides) (1972)
Barbara Schmidt Heins, untitled (Ripped pages out of the binding of a book and newly bound them mirror-inverted along the opposite long sides) (1972)
Barbara Schmidt Heins, untitled (Ripped pages out of the binding of a book and newly bound them mirror-inverted along the opposite long sides) (1972)
Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Ripped pages out of the binding of a book and newly bound them mirror-inverted along the opposite long sides), 1972
Barbara Schmidt Heins, untitled (Used pencil and ruler to draw vertical lines across the whole middle length of the pages. Attempted to rip the pages along the drawn lines. Afterward glued the pages together again alongside the back with white adhesive paper tape) (1972)
Barbara Schmidt Heins, untitled (Used pencil and ruler to draw vertical lines across the whole middle length of the pages. Attempted to rip the pages along the drawn lines. Afterward glued the pages together again alongside the back with white adhesive paper tape) (1972)
Barbara Schmidt Heins, untitled (Used pencil and ruler to draw vertical lines across the whole middle length of the pages. Attempted to rip the pages along the drawn lines. Afterward glued the pages together again alongside the back with white adhesive paper tape) (1972)
Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Used pencil and ruler to draw vertical lines across the whole middle length of the pages. Attempted to rip the pages along the drawn lines. Afterward glued the pages together again alongside the back with white adhesive paper tape), 1972
Gabriele Schmidt Heins, untitled (Painted in the smaller portion of the assumed golden section on the pages with gray paint. Then marked the actual golden section with a red pen (17.3:10.3)) (1978)
Gabriele Schmidt Heins, untitled (Painted in the smaller portion of the assumed golden section on the pages with gray paint. Then marked the actual golden section with a red pen (17.3:10.3)) (1978)
Gabriele Schmidt Heins, untitled (Painted in the smaller portion of the assumed golden section on the pages with gray paint. Then marked the actual golden section with a red pen (17.3:10.3)) (1978)
Gabriele Schmidt Heins
untitled (Painted in the smaller portion of the assumed golden section on the pages with gray paint. Then marked the actual golden section with a red pen (17.3:10.3)), 1978
Gabriele Schmidt Heins, 1 Hour, subjektive / objektive (Excerpt) (1976)
Gabriele Schmidt Heins, 1 Hour, subjektive / objektive (Excerpt) (1976)
Gabriele Schmidt Heins, 1 Hour, subjektive / objektive (Excerpt) (1976)
Gabriele Schmidt Heins
1 Hour, subjektive / objektive (Excerpt), 1976

List of works

Barbara Schmidt Heins
Year 1979, 1979

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (product of chance), 1978

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (product of chance), 1978

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (product of chance), 1978

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Two 0.2 x 5 cm wide strips cut out of the upper and lower corners of the pages with ruler and knife), 1976/1977
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (A 0.2 x 9.7 cm wide strip cut out of the inner sides of the pages with ruler and knife), 1976/1977

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Applied glue (approx. 1 cm wide) to a bound book from the top right edge of the pages to the center of the long side edge. Glued it to the respectively previous page. then cut it open again once dried), 1972/1977
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Offset printed a congruent red 1.5 cm-wide sidebar on both sides of the left long side of 100 pages), 1976
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Offset printed a congruent red 1.5 cm-wide sidebar on both sides of the right long sides of 100 pages), 1976
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Offset printed a congruent red 1.5 cm-wide head bar on both sides of 100 pages), 1976
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
Sample pages, 1975
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Bound 21 pieces of cardboard (a4 size, 2 mm thick) into a book. Referring to the 21 cm width, successively removed 1 cm, 2 cm, 3 cm etc. of the outer edge on every second cardboard and pasted it onto the outside edge of the opposite page), 1972
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Hole-punched the middle of all pages along the outer long side with a paper punch. thread a string through the holes and ripped it out. Painted the holes on both sides with scumble, dunked in oil, then painted over first with gray, then with a white topcoat. Pages partially stuck together along painted parts. Tear marks), 1972
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Used pencil and ruler to draw vertical lines across the whole middle length of the pages. Attempted to rip the pages along the drawn lines. afterwards glued the pages together again alongside the back with white adhesive paper tape), 1972
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Folded the bottom right corners forward and upward to the lefthand page edges producing diagonal folds. Fixated the now horizontal page edges lying over the remainders with white adhesive paper tape. Once dried, cut up the paper tape again and bound the pages into a book), 1972
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Painted over the outer contours of the pictures of a children’s drawing book with gray casein paint), 1972
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Ripped pages out of the binding of a book and newly bound them mirror-inverted along the opposite long sides), 1972
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (glued the pages of a book horizontally and vertically centered with white adhesive tape into the shape of a block), 1972
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Bisected A4 pages by folding them along the center of their short sides. Attempted to rip out rectangles in the middle of the folds. Then unfolded the pages again and bound them into a book along the short side of the pages), 1972
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (Blotted ink spots in the optical center of right-hand side pages of a bound book and squeezed opposite pages together. Covered the ink spots with white paint), 1972
courtesy the artist

Barbara Schmidt Heins
untitled (sample page), 1972
courtesy the artist

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
untitled (Painted in the smaller portion of the assumed golden section on the pages with gray paint. Then marked the actual golden section with a red pen (17.3:10.3)), 1978

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
untitled (A4 pages split into thirds by a line and a cut), 1978
courtesy the artist

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
untitled (Dropped a piece of cardboard with two holes 8 cm apart seven times lengthwise from a height of 40 cm onto the middle of the pages and marked the fallen spots. lines between the points were drawn freehand. They correlate to the seven days of the week. six were drawn with pencil (weekdays) and one line was drawn with a red pen (Sunday). The book has 52 pages, corresponding to the number of weeks in a year), 1978
courtesy the artist

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
untitled (carved out six rectangles, corresponding to the six sides of a die. rolled a die once for every page and cut out the matching field), 1978
courtesy the artist

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
untitled (Marked 1 cm large squares, 10 cm each from the top and side edges of the pages. Then cut along the outline at the top, right and left sides of the square. Took the resulting paper strip between thumb and index finger and ripped it out toward the bottom), 1977

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
untitled (Carved 36 horizontal lines (each line 15 cm long and 0.5 cm apart) into the center of a stencil and typed the respective number left to each one on them using a typewriter. Fed the stencil into a stencil printer, made 100 copies and bound them into a book. Used a toy roulette game with 37 slots (one for zero) and determined a number between 1–36 for each page. Covered the corresponding stencil line with white paint. pages which received a “zero” were left untreated), 1977
courtesy the artist

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
untitled (Took the lower half of the pages and crumpled them by hand, then straightened them out again as good as possible. Bound them along the left long side into a book), 1977

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
untitled (Dropped a drip of ochre paint from 30 cm height where I assumed the golden section to be. Later measured and marked the intersecting point of the actual golden sections with a cross), 1977
courtesy the artist

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
1 hour, subjective / objective (5 × 12 minutes), 1976
courtesy the artist

Gabriele Schmidt Heins
Flip book (A1 and A2), 1972/1975
courtesy the artist