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Buchhandlung Kalter König

Sachsalber, Sven

2016–2018

Photo: Jürgen Eheim

222 pencil drawings on various hotel letterheads.

In a conversation, it was recounted that Sven Sachsalber reproduced most of the drawings by tracing the sheets of paper over his computer screen. Many of the drawings feature Sachsalber’s own works, such as the Artforum series or the performance Sasmonie, as well as childhood characters like Max and Moritz or the bandit Hotzenplotz. One drawing, for example, depicts the Hands exhibition held in 2014 at Museion, or Jane Goodall with a chimpanzee. Friends of Sachsalber obtained the Kippenberger book for him, considered a high-value collector’s item, at a well-known New York gallery (Barbara Gladstone Gallery).

“The eponymous work ‘Buchhandlung Kalter König’ references Martin Kippenberger’s posthumously published book ‘No Drawing No Cry.’ This contained the hotel letterheads that had previously appeared in his famous ‘Hotel-Hotel’ and ‘Hotel-Hotel-Hotel’ volumes with his drawings immortalized on them, and which had here been ‘cleansed’ of these drawings on his request. A book full of white pages, which display nothing but the logos of the hotels Kippenberger stayed in. Sven Sachsalber took these pages as an invitation to draw on them again, creating a diary in which he carries out a systematic exercise in discovery and self-analysis at the cost of the material value of this precious edition. For his book, Sachsalber created 222 pencil drawings in which contemporary culture, folklore, and the animal and human worlds encounter everyday atmospheres and moods.” (See: Excerpt of exhibition text by Emanuele Guidi, written on the occasion of the exhibition “Buchhandlung Kalter König. Sven Sachsalber” at ar/ge kunst, 02.22–04.13.2019)

Artist

Sachsalber, Sven

Schlanders, 1987-05-08 - Vienna, 2020-12-12

Artwork details

Date

2016–2018

Medium

graphic

height

29.6 cm

width

21 cm

Technique

Pencil on paper

Keywords

ART, TIME

Project

Research project Sven Sachsalber

Collection

Private collection, Bressanone

Object number

166

Sachsalber, Sven

Born in 1987 in South Tyrol, died 2020 in Vienna. He worked between New York und Europe. After graduating in business economics in Bologna, from 2010 to 2012 he studied sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London with Professor Richard Wentworth. In 2014 he was awarded the Premio New York by Italy’s Ministry of Culture and in 2019 the Paul Flora Prize. His works are held in Bolzano in the Museion’s collection and in the public collection of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano/Bozen – South Tyrol, as well as by private collections in Europe and in the USA.