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Peter Downsbrough

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1977

6 15/16 x 4 1/4 inches (17.7 x 10.9 cm)

96 pages / Unpaginated / Perfect bound / Softcover

80 plates (photographs, Two Lines, words)

Offset (black and white)

Publisher: Anatol A.V. und Filmproduktion, Hamburg

Printer: Century Printing Company, New York

Print run: not noted (ca. 1,000)

ISBN: none

LCCC: 77-92739

CATALOGUE RAISONNÉ NUMBER: 18

In this book, Peter Downsbrough combines the Two Lines with photographs and text for the first time. The line drawings are always placed at the same height near the bottom corner. Also for the first time, two distinct series of photographs are used: the first series at the beginning of the book show Two Pipes and Two Poles, both in unspecified indoor and outdoor locations; the second series, near the end of the book, shows street views in various unspecified cities (London, Düsseldorf, and New York City). As in the previous book, this book also has horizontal lines on the cover, but this time there are two parallel lines, above and below the title, running from the front to the back cover and across the spine. The title, in white letters, runs horizontally on the front cover and vertically on the spine.

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Peter Downsbrough developed a strongly reduced visual vocabulary, which he used to investigate the given space in a very personal and precise way. His materials consists of letters and lines. He used adhesive letters, forming conjunctions, prepositions, verbs and/or nouns and applies them to the walls, floors and/or ceilings. Lines, for which he used cloth tape, emphasize certain architectural elements. Metal pipes, in the space and sometimes on the wall, accentuate the space. Areas defined by lines or painted black sometimes play a role, and, with the lines and the words reveal the architecture of interior or exterior spaces.

This rigorous treatment of the space continues in Peter Downsbrough’s books, maquettes, photographs, videos or prints. They all reveal an extreme coherence, which some situate in the minimal and conceptual art movements. In the course of time, the spatial interventions with the parallel vertical pipes or dowels have been complemented with words, lines and planes. Conjunctions such as AS, IF, BUT, FROM, MAAR, OP, EN, ET, OU, MAIS… have a double function: they work as iconographic signs which underline and reveal the space, and they offer the viewer the possibility to go, in his/her mind, from one thought to the other. For a conjunction is a word that can’t be declined or conjugated; it establishes a connection between sentences or parts of sentences.

Peter Downsbrough: With the word, one takes part in a dialogue, a discourse on its precise meaning. The word for me is an object. It has both a precise and a vague meaning. It is a universe one is confronted with. But there is no obligatory way of reading.

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