Barbara Schmidt Heins, Gabriele Schmidt-Heins
A book on the books by the artists Barbara Schmidt Heins and Gabriele Schmidt-Heins, published on occasion of the retrospective of the same name in the Museum Weserburg Bremen in 1996.
In 1972, the twin sisters decided to get away from the meaningful single sheet. From there on, quantity was their principle. They started working on paper according to a strict, but simple concept of methods wich was hundred times repeated. Each hundred pages are bound into a greyish-blue book in A4 format. The 'bookworks' of each sister fill opposite shelves in a huge library, an art installation in itself. It bears witness not only of countless processing possibilities of paper, but also of the time of life. But it also emphasises the unequal in the equal, the personal in the super-personal, the unique in the uniform, the formal in the playful,... and all of this also vice versa. It can be said that the bookworks by Barbara Schmidt Heins and Gabriele Schmidt-Heins are basically original-non-original artists' books.
The artists' book catalogue Buchwerke was jointly designed by the artists. It is completed by an essay by Guy Schraenen entitled 'Einzahl Mehrzahl' and a list of exhibitions and books. Bremen, Neues Museum Weserburg, 1996. Volume 16 within the series A Museum Within A Museum (24 catalogues + Vol. 1), Bremen, Centre for Artists' Publications Weserburg, 2011.
