Zehn (ten)

Catalog for the 10th anniversary exhibition in Ballhaus in Nordpark, Düsseldorf
October 2007
Design, layout and typesetting: Celia Caturelli, Natalia Stürz and Tino Grass
Text: Celia Caturelli

Ten – or how the hand becomes/transforms into a path/route

Ten: as children we learnt to count with our ten fingers.
Ten: Hands without fingers are like a sketch, like an unfinished drawing of a landscape.
The hand it the source, the fingers are the rivers.
Ten is a rounding, number. It forms a oneness, that is based on multiplicity and diversity.

The number ten forms the basis of the decimal system; the ten commandments, the ten Aristotelian categories, the ten Buddhist precepts. Ten is significant in the Kabbalistic tradition, and is a mystic number in the Islamic faith.

But our number ten is more of a grounding, a coincidence, a joyousness, a retrospection.

There are ten contributions in this book. Ten years ago was my first semester at the Fachhochschule. Ten years later – on the 10th of the tenth month of the year we show the exhibition ‘Ten’ – a cross section of my ten years of teaching.

For ‘Ten’ I performed/executed an excavation in my studio, retrieving old, forgotten and concealed material, bringing it back to life.

In 1997 I worked on the theme of the body as archaeological and memory object. During this period I worked with x-ray images, bitumen, scientific drawings, felt and copper. I over painted photographs, photocopies and their utilizations (was meinst Du mit Verwertungen?). Clay, gypsum, and wax. For ‘Ten’ I am showing an archaeological cross-section of this period in a display case.

Celia Caturelli
(excerpted from the catalogue ‘Ten’, Duesseldorf, 2007)