Radical Writings, Exercitium AR IV

With the “Radical Writings” series (from the early 1980s to the early 1990s), Blank makes her sign even more abstract, clarifying its relationship with time. The long inscribed marks of colour (first rose and rose-violet, then blue) made with a brush on canvas are more linear and uniform. Here Blank literally paints "in one breath", with absolute concentration and without hesitation. Here writing is breathing (Schriftung=Atemzug), painting is breathing, working is living. Each mark, in fact, has the length of one breath, from left to right, from beginning to end, from emptiness to fullness. At the start of the stroke the colour is more intense, and the combination of the two panels of the diptych generates a shadow zone that still references, though in a less imitative form, the space of the book. Writing and painting blend here in the continuity of a time-sign.