ausser mir

From the trace to the track

Anselmo Fox’s ability and skill to connect the self-growing properties of an ink spot and soap bubbles with manual control, his controlling hand, is an achievement and a value of ausser mir (beside myself) not to be underestimated. Hence it does not seem presumptuous to refer to the results as drawings, and notonly in the sense of drawings used for fur or insect-wing patterns.

The works show, without doubt, agraphical technique, a manner of recording, a notation, and certainly an artistic strategy to design asurface. They are not a product of pure chance, but the result of focused, complex procedures and adecisive later selection.

A single sheet forms a jewel, but as a group ausser mir transforms into a histoirenaturelle, a visualization of systolic breathing rhythms — whose specific articulation is seen in differentcultures as a path to enlightenment — into an abstract graphic narrative. Similar to the single image in a silent movie, the petrified time of the burst bubbles is turned into asynthetic zenonic movement. Anselmo Fox’s series socializes the monades and turns the scentinto the trail.

In this work, a simple breath becomes expression. Anselmo Fox, who like only a few other contemporary artists uses his own body as a measure and tool in his work, shows in astrangely light, playful, and nevertheless serious manner, how much inspiration can be found inbreathing, in breathy exhalation.

Friedrich Weltzien, Sophisticated Monades – Or, the inspiration of exhalation Notes about Anselmo Fox’s “beside myself“