Publisher's Synopsis
Starting in the early 2000s, Valentin Hirsch (b. Eschwege, 1978; lives and
works in Berlin) worked dot for dot to construct his monstrously graceful ink
drawings and etchings, a technique he compared to a tattoo artist's. In 2010,
he took the leap and switched from tracing paper to human skin. Drawing
into skin is an irreversible act. Hirsch's tattoos—he works exclusively in black
ink—eschew all pretense, but their existence is also bound to a body and a
life. The motifs in Hirsch's tattoos reflect this ambivalence of the medium:
beasts and shockingly comely skulls seem locked in confrontation or sprawl
into one another; lines and abstract forms posit sharply edged boundaries
that are otherwise alien both to life and to skin as an artistic material. Valentin
Hirsch's first monographic book highlights the transition from drawing to
tattooing
as an inevitable next step in his evolution as an artist. Essay by
Gunter
Damisch, interview with the artist by Uta Grosenick.
