Handtekeningen en foto's van (vermoedelijk) zakenrelaties van Hans Martin c. 1949

This scrapbook page of photographs and signatures relating to Hans Martin is a strange one. It’s like a social register as collage, full of faces and names that are both familiar and anonymous. It’s the signatures that really grab me – the way they stretch and curve across the page, like lines in a drawing, weaving in and out of the photographs. Look at the confident sweep of ‘V.E. Cardin,’ how it sits right on top of the image of the man at his desk, as if to say, ‘I’m here, I matter.' This act of signing is more than just a formality, it’s a performance. It makes me think of those incredible, obsessive notebooks of Hilma af Klint, full of diagrams and words and symbols. Both suggest that art is a process of gathering, of collecting, of trying to make sense of the world through fragments. Ultimately, this scrapbook page is a reminder that art can be found in the most unexpected places, and that the act of looking is always an act of discovery.