Julia Steiner
Ausser Atem
2010

With text and 10 large-format lithographs by Julia Steiner on Zerkall mould made paper, 150 g/m² and text on glassine paper, 35 g/m², hand-bound, 34.3 x 26.2 cm, 44 pages. Cover printed with lithograph, spine and title page embossed.
The lithographs were printed in the Thomi Wolfensberger lithography workshop in Zurich. The hand-made covers were produced in the Atelier für Grafik-, Foto- und Schriftgut­restau­rierung Michael Rothe, Bern.
Print run of 25 numbered copies. Five additional artist's copies not intended for sale carry the numbers EA I–V.
An edition with 2 lithographs was produced in connection with the artist's book. Other publications on Julia Steiner in Verlag Rothe Drucke: Urworte·Orphisch, Dunkle Pferde

It too exists, the haulms' ease. At the end, maybe. Maybe. Because otherwise, Julia Steiner's cosmos leads into a sinking, a splitting and shifting, sometimes it even seems as if the image is exploding, inversely, then is imploding again into the space of the image. What spaces are they, into which the artist abducts us, what breathlessness does she call up, when one turns page after page, further and further? Are they dream-spaces? Are they landscapes of Verdun? Is it dreadful? Is it beautiful? Is it dreadfully beautiful? Are they image-waves? Are they macro- or are they micro-spaces? Do the "thread suns" of Paul Celan's volume of poems "Breath turn" appear, are they "thread suns over the greyish black wasteland", there, where "a tree-high thought seizes the lighttone"? Is it a cosmos, in which, still with Celan, there are "still songs to sing" – "beyond mankind"?
One does not know. One shall not know.
One has to see. And see once more. One wants to see. Much remains – and that is the beauty, the thrill –, everything remains suspended. One thing is certain and certainly does not remain suspended: this tome by Julia Steiner testifies to the fine art of drawing (and is fine book art). This "fragility of the places, of retrospection and of linearity" is breathtaking (to borrow an expression from of the poetically complex text fragments of Julia Steiner).
And then leaf through the volume's pages again, at rest.

Konrad Tobler