Axel Malik's 'Exceeding Colophon'

2 August 2022

Photo: Axel Malik

A miniature exhibition on 56 pages, 'Exceeding Colophon' is a journey through Axel Malik’s world of unreadbale signs and showcases his activity as Artist in Residence. The brochure was published on the occasion of CSMC's 10th anniversary. Hand-signed copies can now be ordered on our website.

On 10 and 11 June 2022, the CSMC celebrated its tenth anniversary on two open days. On this occasion, Axel Malik, currently Artist in Residence at the Centre, exhibited various of his works in the CSMC library at Warburgstraße 28 – where they are in their natural habitat, so to speak, as writing has been Axel Malik’s metier for several decades now. His writing has a remarkable characteristic, though: Although it is not illegible – his signs are effortlessly recognisable as characters – it is unreadable. The characters neither belong to any unknown alphabet nor do they refer to anything, and they never repeat themselves. ‘The scriptural method’, as Malik calls his approach, produces a form of ‘writtenness’ that is as enigmatic as it is fascinating.

In the context of this exhibition, Axel Malik also presented the brochure with the title Exceeding Colophon, a booklet of 56 pages that Malik produced especially for this occasion. Each visitor was able to have their copy stamped and signed with a unique sequence of signs in an individual encounter with the artist.

As art historian Bruno Reudenbach writes in his foreword, which can be read in our blog, the booklet can be understood as ‘miniature exhibition in itself’. With regard to Malik’s works in general, he states: ‘Properties of writing that are often overlooked are demonstrated and even explicitly pointed out, namely its visual qualities and aesthetic values, not to mention its figurative qualities and imagery. As artistic statements on the ontological status of writing, Axel Malik’s works thus touch on fundamental phenomena that are of relevance to Written Artefacts.’

A preview of the brochure is now available on Axel Malik’s Artist-in-Residence page. Anyone who is interested can also order a signed copy, which is free of charge.

Axel Malik has been Artist in Residence at CSMC since 2021. In addition to the Exceeding Colophon, he has also created the Increasing Countdown during this time, a digital writing band that will be extended by one character every day for 756 days until the opening of the Cluster conference ‘Studying Written Artefacts’ on 27 September 2023. He also contributed to the workshop ‘Removed and Rewritten’ in October 2021 with his ‘Intervention Palimpsests’. More is coming up.