Christopher Wool - Absent without leave - DAAD 1993

As a result of his stay in Berlin for a residency program of the DAAD, this publication ponctuated the end of a long period of travel. Christopher Wool published Absent Without Leave, an artist’s book that assembled two hundred black-and-white photographs taken during the year of residency, which had turned into a year of travel throughout Turkey, Eastern and Western Europe. The photocopied snapshots follow page after page, shortly, indistinct, blurry; they merge city and countryside, east and west, day and night, past and present in a single haze of desolation. They signify that only painting as experience and individual practice allows one to give meaning to the chaos of the world and to forge a point of view from which to examine events. A book such as Absent Without Leave reveals how the artist came to create a unique synthesis between historically pertinent painting and a contemporary experience of the world.

Edition of 1.000
EN - 21.6x28cm - softcover - perfect condition