Stein der Weisen (Stone of Wisdom) 1996

Hanne Darboven made “Stein der Weisen,” or “Stone of Wisdom” by hand, each stroke, each line, building it up, layer after layer. It’s like watching someone think, isn’t it? You can almost feel Darboven’s presence here, her hand moving across the page, a dance between intention and accident. I can imagine her in the studio, surrounded by stacks of paper, a world of numbers and notations swirling around her. What does it mean to make marks, to trace the passage of time, to find order in chaos? Darboven’s work reminds me that painting is a form of embodied expression, a conversation between the artist and the world. It's not just about what we see but how we see it. Ambiguity is welcome. Mistakes are part of it. Meaning is found in the process, not just the end result.