KvE

Definitely, that's where it started, with the plaster. 

AH

Yeah, and as the Distributors[1] are cast, they are much more... 

 KvE

…they need to be prepared well and then you have one chance. You throw it in and then it's stuck in its own mold, you know, like its own created mold, which is nice. There's something very uncontrollable in the process.

Depending on the heat of the wax, on the cold of the plaster, on the thickness of the plaster, how much water is in there, and it's every time kind of a surprise how it will turn out. 

AH

Is there a surprise in your work as well, Monique? 

MSD

I think the preparing and then having everything on the surface, like you're doing, is similar. The latex painting is done from the first layer to the last layer and the first layer will be on top in the end. So it's also kind of a one-off chance. But I feel like I really enjoy that.

It is the same with the ink drawings[2]: Everything is there and there is nothing you can hide behind. It takes away some anxiety from me, maybe because you have to be confident about your beginnings and then it just does go along, being visible.

Everything else is just backing. It's just controlling how light it might be, but everything important is already out there. And I can only imagine what it will look like before I pull it off.

KvE

It's a long process as well with the layers

AH

But in a way also short, I guess. People can work on an oil painting for years because you can always not finish it. 

MSD

Yes, with the latex you have all the decisions made already. 

KvE

There is some transparency between the layers, right? 

MSD

Yes, there is kind of a backing to build up. And I can learn which colors are more transparent. Or rather, you learn it when you open it. In that way, it's just fun. But having to be sure when I'm thinking through things is always more pressure. Especially with the Gebanne, it was lots of anxiety because of its size I could just paint it and roll it up at the same time. And I didn't even know whether I put enough oil on it, if it would ever unfold again.

KvE

Oh, of course. 

MSD

So I just kind of saw it pass by as I was painting it. I was only seeing it for the first time when it was installed because I couldn't just unroll 80 meters and take a look. 

KVE

It's really interesting. But you worked on a publication as well, right? You took pictures of every part.

MSD

When I finished it, before the first installation, I hung it up in the photography building at the academy and photographed every part of it and every side, front and back.

Also, almost like a film, I rolled it up, to have a digital version of it. And now I make sure that I have good photos of every installation so that one day when Gebanne won't be able to be installed anymore because the latex has dissolved itself due to light exposure and tension, it will have its final resting case where it's constantly exhibited as documentation in the book but that is more like a coffin, a stationary thing.

AH

I thought it's film.

MSD

That was the installation in Munich. 

AH

But you're also going to have a book. 

MSD

The animated film is part of an installation that happened in Munich. The people who guarded the exhibition would roll it further every day that they worked there. And there was a fixed camera that took one image after the other. So now I'm stitching them together using a morphing program.

The film is part of the iteration that was called Gebanne:Streifen.

KvE

How nice. I feel like it makes a lot of sense that you use the old slide projector in the exhibition now for Szenebild_1-9. 

MSD

Why?

KvE

Because it is old machinery of showing a picture. And I think it's nice that it relates also to the  pillars being rolled up like the projector is being rotational. 

AH

Yes, it has so much rhythm, no? The actual work of transporting something somewhere that is happening with the slide projector, which you will never see in projection, I guess.

The slides kind of mimic being rolled up and taken somewhere. 

MSD
I think it works out quite nicely with the Scratched Sketches[3] that also really—line up.

KvE

They really line up, yes.

AH

They have a specific rhythm as well. 

KvE

And they are also one of the few things that are pre-made, like some found material, which is these desserts that are scraped out, like the last bit of crème brûlée getting out of the glass. 

AH

I also liked how you talked about the violence of the gesture, or how it could also be somewhat violent. This desire to get something out. Just a little bit more. How you cannot stop. There's this moment of exaggerating a bit maybe. 

KvE

And it is then framed in this tiny glass. Quick and necessary for some reason. Also, everyone scrapes it differently before they throw it, I guess. Back in the days, with my sister, we had the chocolates or the peanut butter, and we would scrape it until everything was out, you know? Until the last bits. 

MSD

It's kind of like giving value to something. How much effort you put into scraping everything out.

KvE

It also seems like a luxury somehow that you have the time to scrape it out fully. 

MSD

Yeah, for a little while, after dessert eating.  

AH

But you did sketch, no? 

KvE

Some of them I didn't sketch and then I got to know that it was actually quite fun.  

And then I sketched, yes. I was like, ah, I can make a shape now.

I can control this. I can control my attitude towards scraping it out.

MSD

Do you still know which ones you steered and which ones just happened? 

KvE

For sure.

AH

Can you see it or do you know it? 

KvE

I think maybe you can see that it is more deliberate in a way, that it is more controlled scraping. I have one that is really nice. I really like the shape of it, but it was totally an accident. 

MSD

Is that the one when you realized?

KvE

Yes, it was a turning point. But I also didn't think about it too much because it's still part of the process of pouring the Crayon Rocks [4] with colored wax and it has to be quick. I have to get it in the molds because the wax is getting solid again. I don't really have the time to think too much about these sketches. This is kind of nice.

AH

So there is a kind of ever-consuming logic in the works. Maybe not so much in the pillars but in the sketches. They predate basically the crayon rocks. And the Crayon Rocks then... 

KvE

…make the drawing. And then the drawing makes the dust. And then it's kind of complete in a way. But I think this attitude, this way of working is also a bit in the pillars in a way as they are made out of stucco runner. I brought stucco runner for the first time to my studio to be able to protect the floor from plaster. And then eventually it became a material as well.

It's all of these steps in between. I even have a little work, it is not in the show, that is just a glove that I use for the plaster that I turned inside out. I put it on a wall with a bit of stucco runner underneath it and it was a work, you know? All of these steps, they become something. There are discoveries on the street with the pipes that I depicted in my wall drawings. But it's also in the studio: discoveries of the works themselves or what you consider a work.

AH

This also relates to a specific kind of attitude towards material and work, like work-work in terms of labor. 

KvE

And value. I mean the idea that it can be everywhere and anywhere at any time. It's nice because that makes me kind of sharp during the day. That it's all around. That it could be all around. Not in an anxious way, more in a confirming way or... How do you say that? 

AH

Like curiosity? 

KvE

Curiosity and... a confirmation that I am here at this place, at this moment. Which is nice.  

AH

I think it's really funny that you use the same material.

MSD

It was really funny to see your packaging material. It is also the base of the radiator pieces. It was the surface I painted on.

KvE

It’s kind of logic as well. Stucco runner is the first thing you would think about for a flat surface. 

MSD

It's flat. It's endless, kind of. It's really long. It's repellent. It’s nice. It's fast. And it fits the size pretty much. A bit bigger than what I was looking for, but yeah. 

KvE

You packaged them also very small in the same material. 

MSD

By that time, I had already seen yours. It was not a complete accident. I think that's a nice way of touching each other's work that isn't active visible in the exhibition. 

KvE

Now they make different ones, but before I had stucco runner that was with all kinds of lines. Folding lines, because it used to be cardboard packages for milk or yogurt or lemonade or whatever and it had all these lines where you would fold the packaging. And then when the plastic came off, you could also see the prints, the misprints in the packaging, basically. And that's also why I chose at one point for the floor protection to become a part of the work because I was already working with using found packages as moulds in the Distributor series. And then it made sense. 

MSD

I think they're still reusing. I saw some lettering, some different colors inside. I think they're just dyeing it black. 

KvE

Yes, it’s like a tiny layer of plastic and I'm always wondering what's underneath there. 

AH

There is an interest in endlessness, no? Not in a contemplation sense, which could also be like an endless... 

KvE

… gaze.

AH

Yes, the endless gaze to the image that kind of perpetuates itself in this other. It's a different endlessness. 

KvE

Something without a frame, basically. Or without a confined space.

MSD

I don't know, I like that the latex is decaying, that it's more about the moment rather than having a painting where you kind of just assume that it's going to be there forever. Same with the sculpture, I guess. To see that it's only going to be like this now. And that's, I think, what makes looking at it more precious. Having this time with this exhibition makes it special.

Even with the Szenebild_ drawings that you can look at without getting to a point where you can really say, okay, now I know what I'm looking at. Maybe you just have to give up trying. I guess what I personally find interesting about time is that you set your own end point.

KvE

It's really like a transformation over time. That is also the erosion process addressed in the title. Something going away over time, quickly enough that we can notice it as humans. 

MSD

But I mean, I am still taking photos, so it does stay in a different way.

KvE

Nothing is ever disappearing. 

MSD

Unless your USB stick breaks, which also happens. Because then it's just files and data and also no security. With the next solar winds, the cloud is going to be destroyed. 

KvE

Yes, it is weird, but also different with material, I guess. It's always transforming all these particles into something else. I don't know if it's disappeared then or just takes another shape in different kinds of things, like dust or gas or anything, even a picture.

MSD

I think it's interesting to consider what we maybe mean when we think about endlessness. There's a way to perceive time that is interesting. If there are things that move so slowly that you can't perceive it, it's just slightly out of our reach to see the change.

AH

It is also interesting to connect that back to the exhibition space. You were talking about the different time that the exhibition space has. Which also means that you are the only one who's going to see a decay in Gebanne. Because it's here now for a time. And then it's going to be gone and nobody's going to notice it over those three months. And it's not going to return. 

MSD

I think it will return. Well, no, not to the place.

AH

That's what I mean. 

MSD

What is it for the place then?

AH

That's what I was wondering. But I couldn't really make much sense out of it so far. I think it is different forms of endlessness. Because that one endlessness is not really sensed. Gebanne has another tremendous endlessness. There are many things I can't perceive in the work. They either disappear somewhere. Or are distorted. Or rolled up. Or in a pile.There is a certain attention maybe or a heightened awareness of the things that slip by. And then I don't know, how much do you want or need to know about where it was coming from. Also, this endlessness of painting, meticulously, basically your student situation, in a way. Which is also a bit insane. Most people also want to get rid of it and then Gebanne is meters and meters, you take along and drag along for a very long time.

MSD

Yeah, but you kind of carry it around either way.

KvE

Yeah, that's true. I guess the only thing that I would have against it is that it's tiring to be a student forever. 

AH

It's also a funny comment on the system, no, continuously bringing in student work?[5]

MSD

And also in a way torn down.

KvE

I guess the installing every time is also another part of the work. 

MSD

It is a new work, it's a new concept for the same piece.

KvE

It's also funny that it goes directly from painting on a surface to working with it as a three-dimensional work, which is super cool. Every time it's different, all the endless possibilities that are there to install the work. 

MSD

And every new building kind of decides, or has a role in the decision, of what will happen with it, because it's the thing that will carry the painting. If I don't decide to build a new construction that holds things, then it also takes on the shape of the building, takes something from the building. 

AH

What is your interest in the buildings? 

MSD

We are in them. I don't know, are the buildings interesting? They are full of decisions, but they are maybe different from the decisions that you make within artwork. Every decision that's done in a building, effects so many people. The building hinders you, or enables you, or influences how you behave with the things that are in the building, and the other people. But you often just use it as it's there, and take it for, not for granted, but just take it as a thing, it's continual. 

The painting takes on the shape of the building, it is a marker of things, and uses the rules of the building to make sense in it. And it's always going to be very unique, very specific to its respective area. Also thinking of painting and where painting came from: Painting took on the shape of the building, surrounding it, taking on the walls. My paintings can do that again temporarily, and then, elsewhere, with a different building.

 And I guess I always also think the latex paintings together with the actual oil paintings that I do, that are a lot about art and finances, making money and not having money to produce pieces. I like that Gebanne is a giant piece that is not sellable, going away from the commodified painting and back onto the walls, where it was hard to sell, again hard to sell. 

KvE

I really like that. I also thought about it in relation to the Crayon Rocks, since I use them as a tool. I am not going to sell my hammer to other people, I am not going to sell my dust mask or something. On the other hand, they could be a work, but still, I thought I would just keep them as tools, and that's just what they are, also as a work. If I sell them, then I have to make them again, and then they can't do the things that they need to do.

MK

Or other people have to promise that they will draw with them. 

AH

Or they have to borrow. 

Borrow them back, and accept that they dissolve. Or change.

MSD

When they bring them back, they have to weigh less.

KvE

When I was thinking about selling them once, I wondered what price I would set, and then I thought I'd do them by weight. That would make sense. The small one is very affordable then, and the big one less. But now I think I know that I don't want to sell them.

Maybe at one point, when they are used enough, but still there, and I think they are done, then they can retire, maybe. One disappeared, as well: The very light purple that is in every drawing at GAK. I used it as a sketch, to sketch it first.

MSD

Was that an oily one, or a plaster one? 

KvE

Plaster. But I kind of also forgot how it looked like. I know there was this tiny, tiny drop left, but now I am not seeing it anymore.

AH

What made you do the rocks in the first place? 

KvE

It is also a leftover material. When I made the series of Distributors, I had a lot of wax left, in different colors and it was still warm. So I wanted to get rid of it, and thought, I should make a quick other mold to put something in and then see further, what I could do with it. I elaborated on that later, doing more, with different colors. At one point I also noticed that beeswax is nice to draw with because it's a bit soft. But it's also a very precious material that I don't want to use. I am more into the paraffin now, the pouring wax, but that's too hard. I made some crayons with it but they are not usable as crayons because they're not giving off. Then I thought maybe if I pour a little bit of oil in, that always stays liquid, I can soften the wax down. That's how I got the crayons to work. If plaster is leftover, it will just harden out in the bowl. I realized, that I had already sometimes leftover pieces of plaster that I drew with on the ground, just like when I was a kid.

AH

… when you find the right stone.

KvE

I used to have these crayons for outside as a kid, like very soft plaster ones but I never realized that they were plaster. Recently out of my window, I looked over the streets and there is one family that lives somewhere across. One day the children were playing with the crayons outside, they drew on everything, you know. When the kids went to school the next day the parents started cleaning all the crayon marks. It's super nice that it's so temporary. I think that's also the reason that it felt more in line to draw on the walls than on a piece of paper or onto a wooden panel that I would bring. It feels way more real to have the directness. I can't really fully erase it and start over, or say, okay, I don’t choose this piece, but this piece. And also, it's temporary, I can't take it with me afterwards. 

AH 

It won't clean off as easy as outside, probably. 

KvE

At first, I was a bit worried with the Crayons. They are so small, how would they be in the space. But when these tiny crayons have such a big result, can be a wall full of…, full of a work, that's really nice. In that way it was also a surprise when the Gebanne entered in a much smaller package than I expected.

AH

All folded up 

MSD

I think it's nice to have small pieces to make big works with.  

KvE

I really like this endlessness that we came to at one point. It's also, again, related to the view you have in the space, either within or to the outside. And it directs to the building and how we deal with architecture. And it goes back to material again. I feel they are all kind of reactionary to each other and go from space to material to the concept of endlessness or time. Kind of a chain reaction. 

MSD

I don't know why I don't like the word endlessness, but maybe I can befriend it. I think it's circulatory things. That's maybe what I see more. 

AH

But that's funny, you made the connection with Fuchur in the first piece of the exhibition, in Opens. 

MSD

Yes, I know.

AH

How can you not like endlessness? Fuchur is from The Neverending Story. 

MSD

But is neverendingness the same as endlessness? 

KvE

Or is it boundless? 

MSD

I think The Neverending Story still is, I think…

KvE

…it still has a start and an end. It does have a start. 

AH

Not really. 

MSD

It has like waves. No? I mean, I guess that's why I think of it more as circulatory. 

AH

True, it is like a circle. That's also the symbol.

MSD

Of endlessness? 

AH

No, on the book. There is two snakes biting each other's tail, I think, and the imprint on the book that you hold in your hands looks the same as the one the protagonist finds in the story. So it has kind of this ongoing confusion about who's who, who's reading what. What are you being lured into. 

MSD

And who effects what. 

AH

True, that most of all, I guess. But what is your issue with endlessness? 

MSD

Maybe there's too much hope.  

I think it's the same issue, it just leads to assumptions that are not correct.

AH

In a romanticist kind of way. Is that what you mean? 

MSD

I'm also just thinking about ourselves, like in: The world is ending. No it’s not. This is thinking from our perspective that we, as us, will never die. We'll never go away. I think there is some perspective that might lead to just a wrong angle on things. So... 

AH

In an anthropocentric sense. Also, of this endlessness of resources that you can always take and take and use.

KvE

I also have a feeling that it's really soothing that even though we are not here anymore, the world has not ended. It still goes on and it still continues somehow. That even after everything ends, there are still things living. There are still things going on. It's still turning. It's still moving.

MSD

This is the notion in the image layers of the radiator pieces as well, that are connected to the history of the building, when it was a storage place. There is a movement in both directions of having been more and then diminishing and being more again. I guess transporting one thing to another. The radiator pieces are five similar things that have a dozen or kind of a unit on it and a process that looks different with each piece. Both change and the same system is always applying to the same things. On the bottom line of the works they kind of have a water horizon. It's the same with the river. It is one thing, but it changes. It buries itself deeper into earth constantly. It's all part of the movement. 

KvE

Maybe endlessness is a bit too close then to eternity?

MSD

Even if you look at space, the way we think of our solar system as this closed endless loop, doing the same thing over and over again. But in reality it's just going into a direction, just hurling.

It's not this… (gesturing) 

KvE

…it’s spiraling…

MSD

We are going somewhere. Nobody knows where.

AH

But I think that's why I like endlessness. Because for me it's very much connected to not being able to grasp the horizon which is as far as the eye can see. But it's never anything.

It always slips. It's always not there. Whenever you arrive, it's just not there.

MSD

You can never get it. 

AH

Yes, even if you close your eyes for one second, it is going to be different.

KvE

Something that is always out of reach. 

MSD

But again, even the horizon is connected to you. It's always there.

AH

It's always connected to where you are. 

MSD

You determine where the horizon is. 

KvE

That's super cool. A very… common concept, but then very personal. Super personal. 

MSD

That brings me maybe to the book that I would like to add to the bookshop: Bollnow, Mensch und Raum – it consists of brief descriptions of aspects of space and personhood or people. It just describes things like what is a path, what is a way, what is a house, what is a home.

What is left and what is right as opposed to up and down, and what is a horizon, for example, which I find really interesting. 

AH

Very much looking forward.

MSD

I think especially the horizon part really blew my mind. How you can use your own horizon as a tool to know if you're on a hill or climbing mountains. You know if you're higher than a specific other mountain that you see far way. Because you know where the horizon is. Because it's always on your eye level. So you can kind of measure where on that mountain you would be. And if it's higher, then it’s higher than you. 

KvE

It's a bit like the internalized leveller, yeah. Also keeping your balance. You feel when it's off, you feel when it's going back. You feel dizzy. 

MSD

But I kind of understand. Is endlessness a way of giving up control? 

AH

Giving up control? Maybe sometimes. It depends. It's maybe giving up control in the sense of when a moment is endless. When it is just way too long and gets super uncomfortable. But somehow the word control doesn't fit for me. It's maybe more certainty rather than control. 

KvE

I think when I have to live for an amount of time that I'm not able to calculate, I would become totally depressed. Or anxious, asking what's the point? But you could also be like: "Ah, well then I have nothing to lose so I can do finally the things that I would usually be afraid of." Being honest to certain people, go bungee jumping or whatever. Either way, if you're going to go on the more positive side of relating to it or the more depressing side of relating to it, it has something extreme. It makes every feeling bigger because it is eternity. Or not eternity, but kind of forever or something like endless. 

AH

Simon Critchley wrote a book about memory theatres. The character has been concerned with memory techniques quite a bit. Through the notes of a thinker friend, who had already died, and who had sketched the path to the ultimate kind of memory theatre, he finds out about his own death date. Afterwards he builds this memory theatre, sort of for real, and kind of envelopes himself totally inside. He is super ready and then the day comes and he just doesn't die. How can that be, trying to contain and grasp everything and understand and know it all, and then it just doesn't show up.

KvE

It is also a bit how it is with work, right? You do the whole layering and then the first layer turns out to be something else you expected. I make the pillars and they're not long enough. But I thought they would be at least two centimeters longer. And suddenly there's no sunshine, so there was a dark corner. 

AH

And the opening is at night. And the show is opening in the winter. It can also be very nice when you see the timeliness of exhibitions. When you enter an exhibition in spring and you realize that the light situation is completely off because it was made for January, let's say, and not thought about that the light situation would change over the duration. 

MSD

That's why the light projector is set to portions of the day and night times by the time the exhibition ends. It's a very big window, a big difference in sun hours from now until mid-May. 

KvE

When does the sun go down in May? Because now it's like around six, right?

MSD

Much later. I think it's fifteen sun hours by then. Probably at nine. 

[1] The Distributors (2023-ungoing) are a series of wall sculptures made by Klaartje van Essen. They are shaped by pouring fluid wax and plaster in discarded packaging materials, creating unforeseen details in the process. The Distributors have been installed on walls, connected to electricity pipes that run through the building, making them part of a bigger network.

[2] Referring to Desto’s Szenebild_ drawings which show ambiguous scenes constructed of relatively few, bold, black ink lines on paper.

[3] The series of Scratched Sketches by Klaartje van Essen are works that consist of glass dessert trays that Klaartje uses for mixing wax or latex with color pigments for other sculptures like the Crayon Rocks. Considering the brief moment of scraping out the trays as an opportunity to make a sketch. 

[4] The 156 Crayon Rocks are homemade wax or plaster crayons that were created because there was leftover plaster and wax from the Distributors‘ production. Van Essen didn‘t want to simply let these harden, but colored them and poured them into this handy form. Using the chalks, van Essen can create temporary drawings on walls.

[5] Produced as Desto’s graduation piece, Gebanne: was conceptualized for installation throughout the three rooms of their students’ pavilion at AdBK Nuremberg. The motif sections are referring directly to the placement within the respective rooms, while made to also work and interact with other exhibition spaces throughout Gebanne’s future installation iterations.