| Katrin Ströbel’s drawings are anti-drawings in the sense that they are not expressions of emotion but rather transformed and documented impressions of her surrounds through visual research. They are linear progressions, abstractions that copy, combine, and thereby reformulate things already in existence. Her graffiti documentation, overlapping fragments of ornament, and commercial graphics are translated into hand drawings. Ströbel’s interest is focused on the links between writing and image, where she explores the transition between writing and drawing as the blending of cultures, their delineation and transformation. Lettering on the packaging of exotic goods, mottos in cyrillic, poster advertising or even the cover of an Asterix comic translated into arabic, are used to reflect a cosmos the artist perceives around her. Drawing thus functions as a means of translation into a different context, which in turn emphasises the everyday nature of the mixture of signs and images. |
