In the autumn of 2018, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is devoting an exhibition to the drawings of the artist Lili Fischer (b. 1947). The show will feature some 70 drawings and scripts from important work series such as Milchmädchenrechnung (Naive Miscalculation) and Waschlappendemo (Face Cloth Demo) that the museum has received in a generous donation, augmenting its previous holdings of works by Fischer.

The subtitle »It All Begins with Drawing...« can be regarded as the essence of Fischer’s artistic practice, because the springboard for her extensive work series, developed over long periods of time, is always the drawing process. The artist undertakes detailed observations of cloud formations, objects, people or insects, borrowing from the methodology of cultural-historical fieldwork, and then thoughtfully puts down these quite commonplace subjects on paper.

On a quest for answers to specific questions, she zeroes in on her subjects artistically – using the motions of drawing. Lili Fischer’s drawings, borne by dynamically flowing lines that frequently segue into writing, thus oscillate between poetry and scientific acuity, finding a real-world equivalent in the translation of her artistic research into the medium of performance. Fischer’s drawing thus overcomes not only thematic boundaries but also those between media.