West=Frontt des Zehntheiligen Skt. Adolf=Kathedral=Schiffes in, Skt. Adolf=Heim 1916

Adolf Wölfli’s ‘West=Frontt des Zehntheiligen Skt. Adolf=Kathedral=Schiffes in, Skt. Adolf=Heim’ is made with colored pencil, and what strikes me is the obsessive, all-over quality of mark-making, the sense that no patch of the surface can be left untouched. It's like a wild, handmade cosmos bursting out all over the place. Looking closely, you see how Wölfli builds everything from these repetitive marks. The colored pencil feels totally integrated with the structure, a kind of symbolic architecture, as if the building itself is growing organically from the colored marks. Each individual gesture or motif isn’t necessarily that interesting, but collectively, they build into this visionary architectural form. I think of Hilma af Klint, or maybe even Forrest Bess, artists who are compelled to make visible their own eccentric cosmologies. Ultimately, this piece embraces not having a single meaning, it’s a record of one person’s inner world, and that’s the kind of art I find most compelling.