Thomas Zipp | abstract pleasures

For his series abstract pleasures, Thomas Zipp’s first collaboration with BORCH Editions, the artist combined photogravure plates with different etching techniques and letters, which he hand-punched into copper plates. For the photogravure plates Zipp used photographic material from two of his performances. Some of the works show so-called Rescue Anne dolls, originally invented for reanimation training, and frequently incorporated into Zipp’s performances. Masked performers manipulate the dolls and move them through the performance spaces. Other images, like a neglected plastic plant, are taken from Zipp’s studio.

Thomas Zipp’s work is informed by his interest in religion, philosophy, history, and science. He is especially preoccupied with Psychophysics, a subdiscipline of psychology. Psychophysics is the science of the relationship between an individual’s inner sensations and the outer physical stimuli triggering them. Zipp translates the interrelation of subjective experience and objective measurement into the visual tension between photographic material and rasters or bits of scientific text.

Thomas Zipp, born 1966 in Heppenheim, Germany. He lives and works in Berlin.