Elisabeth Holder

Signs: Traces

Found in Nature

Finding signs as traces in nature is not difficult at all. We are surrounded by formations that have emerged from natural processes, such as growth or geological developments, and which are revealed to us as traces. These works explore these types of traces and highlight their sign-like quality using simple means.

Traces: Found in Nature
1 / 7   Landscape, 2017. Signs produced by erosion.
Traces: Found in Nature
2 / 7   Singled Out. Dry straw, 2017
Traces: Found in Nature
3 / 7   Muster. Object, 2017/2023. Photography: Eunok Cho
Traces: Found in Nature
4 / 7   Strandfund, Pebble, 2017
STraces: Found in Nature
5 / 7   Aus dem Schlummer geholt. Polished pebbles, 2017
Traces: Found in Nature
6 / 7   Zeichenträger. Object, 2023. Photography: Eunok Cho
Traces: Found in Nature
7 / 7   Echo. Traces on porcelain with pebble, 2018

From Action to Sign

Every action leaves characteristic traces, every force affects a material in a certain way. When, as the author has done, a stone is repeatedly scratched using a pointed harder object, a random pattern emerges from the scratch lines that is shaped, however, by the rhythm and pulse of the executed movement. When strongly magnified, the signs created by the specific movement emerge from the apparent tangle of lines. An earlier work uses the force of a magnet sitting at the tip of a pin. In a playful action, the magnetic end of a pin picks up thin rods of magnetic material and bundles them, thereby transforming them into a new sign.

 

Traces: From Action to Sign.
1 / 5   Scratch Marks. Detail, 2018
2 / 5   Scratch Marks. Video, duration: 0'49''
Traces: From Action to Sign.
3 / 5   Scratch Marks. Still images
Traces: From Action to Sign.
4 / 5  Hexenbesen, Pin, 2001
ÜTraces: From Action to Sign.
5 / 5   Hexenbesen, Pin, 2001