JORINDE VOIGT: Codification of Intimacy: Works on Niklas Luhmann

David Nolan Gallery is excited to present Codification of Intimacy: Works on Niklas Luhmann, on view from May 1 through June 21. For her second solo exhibition with the gallery, Jorinde Voigt has produced 14 large-scale works on paper and a group of smaller drawings.

Through the medium of drawing, Voigt has devised a complex and highly developed system of articulating immaterial phenomena as visually engaging compositions. Suggesting the appearance of scientific diagrams or musical scores, these seemingly abstract arrangements encompass a very precise range of references. In recent years, Voigt has developed an interest in literary and philosophical works as subjects within her artwork. Her 2012 series “Piece for Words and Views” was an artistic response to Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse, and Voigt has since taken inspiration from sources including the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, psychiatrist Carl Jung and Beethoven.

This new body of work takes as its starting point a book by the German sociologist Niklas Luhmann, Love as Passion: The Codification of Intimacy (1982), which analyzes the evolution of love in Western Europe from the seventeenth century to the present. In keeping with Voigt’s practice, she identifies key words and passages (that trigger intuitive associations) transposing the essential concepts into visual images. With scientific care, the artist supplements her drawings with handwritten annotations serving as references to particular chapters or passages in the book. Across the sheet, freehand ink lines connect key elements, constructing a matrix that defines Voigt’s spatial and temporal parameters. Visually sumptuous, these new drawings reflect the artist’s recently discovered fascination with gold and silver leaf, which she augments with intensely colored pastel and watercolor elements.

Works by Jorinde Voigt (b. 1977, Frankfurt), who lives and works in Berlin, are represented in a number of major collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Art Institute of Chicago; the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; and the Centre Pompidou, Paris. In 2012 she was awarded the 5th Drawing Prize of the Guerlain Contemporary Art Foundation. Her work has been exhibited widely in group and solo exhibitions in the United States and in Europe. Works from this series were recently exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO) and a forthcoming book on these works will be published this May.