Nadine Fecht

The large-format drawing Jedes Kollektiv braucht eine Richtung (Every Collective Needs a Direction, 2012) by the Berlin-based artist Nadine Fecht was created by Fecht constructing a gigantic bundle of 1,805 vertically positioned ballpoint pens and using her physical strength to move this bundle across the paper. It is the maximum number of pens that Fecht could lift and drag across the sheet at the same time.

These movements resulted in more or less parallel, wavy lines that feed into a tissue-like thickening. The pictorial language invoked here may be reminiscent of the abstract representations of Informalist art, but Fecht is not at all concerned with appealing to a visual language that foregrounds the artist’s unconscious creative act.

Fecht in this drawing rather engages with socio-critical and socio-political issues; after all, while she is able to influence the rough direction of the bundle, she cannot influence the pathway of each individual pen. How does an individual pen behave when there is pressure on the collective? When looking at Jedes Kollektiv braucht eine Richtung, viewers notice that individual pens deviate from the bundle’s directional movement; they take on a life of their own, they jump and zigzag. Her work thus makes it possible to visually experience the individual’s deviation within a mobilized mass.