Among the many fruitful relationships between art and literature in a historical perspective, the dialogue between poetry and sculpture plays a special role in contemporary art. The fact that this has hitherto gone largely unnoticed has prompted the creation of the exhibition “Poetry in 3D. Text Sculptures and Poem Objects since 1960” at the German Museum of Books and Writing at the German National Library. The exhibition focuses on a tradition of experimental poetry and the visual arts which has witnessed the production of texts in the form of three-dimensional artworks. The objects are either inscribed with texts or the letters themselves become sculptural forms.

The exhibition offers an international overview of the many different forms of three-dimensional poetry. The exhibits include works by famous representatives of experimental poetry and the visual arts, including artists from Central and Eastern Europe as well as from North and South America. In the works of the artists represented, sculpture and poetry merge in an interdisciplinary manner.

“Poetry in 3D” is thought-provoking: what form can a text take beyond the confines of lines printed on paper surfaces? What sort of sensory impressions can be conveyed by reading beyond the linguistic content? What part do unconventional writing materials and techniques play? How can one make sense of the world using abstract symbols?

The exhibition features works by Alain Arias-Misson, Arman and Nanni Balestrini, Josef Bauer, John Cage, Augusto de Campos, Carlfriedrich Claus, Attila Csernik, Klaus-Peter Dencker, Peter Downsbrough, Valie Export, John Furnival, Heinz Gappmayr, Jochen Gerz, Carlos Ginzburg, Dietrich Helms, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Dieter Jung, Miroslav Klivar, Milan Knížák, Ferdinand Kriwet, Gastão de Magalhães, Franz Mon, Ewa Partum, Octavio Paz, Julio Plaza, Géza Pernecky, Gerhard Rühm, Konrad Balder Schäuffelen, Takako Saito, Takahashi Shohashiro, Regina Silveira, Andrea Tippel, Karel Trinkewitz, Timm Ulrichs, Peter Weibel.

An exhibition supported by The Centre for Artists’ Publications at the Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen

The exhibition will be shown from 8 April to 8 January 2023.

To mark the exhibitions “Poetry in 3D” and “Sculptural Poetry” (26.03. to 14.08.2022) at the Centre for Artists’ Publications (Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen), Grass Publishers is publishing the first six editions of the new series “paper-poem-objects”, edited by Christoph Benjamin Schulz. Published in cooperation with the German Museum of Books and Writing and the Weserburg, the series is available to purchase at the museum.

On 17 May 2022, exhibition curator Dr Christoph Benjamin Schulz gave an online lecture on “Sculptural Poetry – Plastic Texts and Poem Objects in Experimental Literature and the Fine Arts Since the 1960s” as part of the series Die Materialität von Schriftlichkeit – Bibliothek und Forschung im Dialog (”The Materiality of Textuality – Library and Research in Dialogue”) at the Berlin State Library. The lecture can be accessed here on YouTube.