The Votive Paintings of Michael Endlicher demand arbitrary action from the viewer. You first have to choose an item, then you have to declare yourself by hanging the painting. There are always two cut-out „4-letter-words“ in the paintings, one is always at the top, below is the other one upside down and averted. The reciprocal relationship between the two words opens up the space that generates the images.
In the performance Cutting in one own’s Painting now you are already involved before the Votive Paintings are finished: The Gallerygoers are called to give letters to the artist just at their whim. Out of the accidentally generated row of letters Endlicher takes 4 consecutive letters and and cuts this new „4-letter-items“ live into the prepared corporas of the paintings.
With this Votive Paintings 2.0 the viewers are pushed into a new dimension while searching for meaning. As Jorge Luis Borges has posited in The Library of Babel also the reputed most senseless combination of letters does have a meaning in any language somewhere out. Without mulling over words and anti-words as normally necessary with Votive Paintings the randomized presetting of letters works simplyfiing and accelerating but at the same time it turnes out as a long-winded methode to create meaning.
The Performance is literally conceived as a competitive exhibition:
How many paintings can be finished by the artist during the 5 hours which the Gallery round is lasting?
Is it possible that a combination of letters is already locally proving to be meaningful?
And what images will appear by confronting sense with non-sense?
Endlicher, 2008