Mitarbeiter und Freunde 1988

Here we have Hanne Darboven’s grid work, "Mitarbeiter und Freunde," made without dates using photography and text. Darboven’s process isn’t about hiding labor; it’s all about the making. Think of it as a type of visual score, each image has its own tone, and the sum of all the parts is a visual symphony. The photographs themselves seem to freeze gestures of social life and leisure, while the text below each image might indicate some kind of personal record, a log or diary entry which attempts to grasp time. What’s so striking is how the material qualities of the installation as a whole are so important. The size of the work, the sheer number of individual parts, all of this contributes to how we read these individual snapshots. Darboven’s art shares a sensibility with artists like On Kawara who similarly make time and memory the primary subject of their work. Both artists embrace repetition and seriality as a way of grappling with existence.