on banality - volume 1

It is possible to learn much about language functioning by observing how it fails - either because it is still immature or because it has become dysfunctional. It's what makes the recent production of Julia Kater, who besides being an artist acts as a pedagogue. 'Free designs on imposed themes' present fragments of a collection of clouds, trees, suns and houses designed by children of literacy age. Learning to read and write does not only mean increasing cognitive processes and motor skills. The collection edited by the artist evidences, in a sagacious visual chain, the schematic character of the "literate drawing" that is formed when children, compelled to mean something, repeat prefabricated schematic forms.