such supplementary letters are very personal, they make claims without evidence, they interpret based on their own observations. we planned this exhibition and thought the collage medium was an exciting bridge between the two. i don't see much of it now except for paper, but i speculate that both have something in common: they don't have time. not leon polk smith, because he had a vision of the next work he wanted to create, but still carried the memory of earlier pictures with him. he wasn't interested in society, but the life of birds in new york and his large paintings.

franz mon has no time because on the way somewhere, even with a firm decision to get angry, he might notice a forgotten advertising supplement in a newspaper, he remembers actions, people, incidents, so, on the way somewhere with the decision to get angry, he fills his pockets with material and thoughts, makes him turn around and clever collages emerge from a flea market. here not a centimeter is without thought, if you take a closer look, you always discover new things, depending on your age and individual knowledge. franz mon is surrounded by relationships. he is a social person, interested - historically and currently - in what is built, traded, handicrafts, art and science. he gathers the leftovers and uses the traces to show the variety of actions, their possible beauty. 

reflections on the collages and drawings by leon polk smith shown here. they were created over a long period of time between 1946 and 1995. paper, hand-made paper and cardboard were used. they are not material collages, but color collages. they are of different sizes, he uses what is available. decisions between image and collage are very different. the picture is unique and his own. he buys the wood for the frame, the canvas, the paints, the nails for the back wall, because the sides are also painted. they are often circles, ovals, triangles, rounded squares. when the many layers of color are finished, the picture shines. he can step back in amazement. now he is looking for a place on the wall for this. here he is free, 'up .. 2 steps to the right ..., no ... back ...' until he has found the best place for the picture and the wall and the space in between to the corner of the room. nobody can understand that, one can only agree, it is often right. later, perhaps in a new room, completely different rules apply. leon's own form moves through decisions to its place on the new wall. dialogues take place here. leon knows dialogues like this, sometimes he is happy about the power of his pictures. different with the collages, no external dialogues take place, the power, the responsibility to succeed lies only with him. the choice of paper, the size, the mostly rectangular shape, the few colored elements that are put on according to his creative plan, not following any mathematical rule, but as a one-off part, not addable as a chain or as a module in a larger context. the collage is like the wall with the picture in its proper place. he puts the elements on carefully, he doesn't shift them around to see how they work best, there is no turning back. it is the one-time, lonely decision of a pictorial architect, good, unmodern, not variable. in the case of graphics, the selection for a portfolio, an overview of his collages, he collects these decisions which he had made as a pictorial architect into a series, makes a selection - as a historical sequence, as a sequence of contrasts of forms and colors, their moods and possibilities, and enlarges them proportionally. undisturbed, he made these decisions and with full responsibility for an imaginary audience. he didn't want to impress anyone and didn't think the portfolio would be a success. he only made a few such portfolios. but many very strong paintings, but then they were almost for him alone, compared to the exposure of decisions made in the collages, which he did not see as assertions.

for the exhibition, franz mon chose signed torn-drawings, large original collages, signed prints based on original collages, signed prints also from historical graphic portfolios of concrete poetry from the period 1967 to 2013. and a very large text space, the mortuary, shown at the venice biennale, 1970, a second time in sao paolo 2011. the digitized data is in the mmk in frankfurt, the model in his possession. we are now realizing this text space, the mortuary for 2 alphabets in 11 languages

in our gallery, for franz mon on his 95th birthday. about the artist of language there is also a film by franz mon about the mortuary on the internet. we planned to hand over this space to him as a big surprise, now finally realized in frankfurt,- but now he has contributed so much to its realization that it will be his own textspace again. blaiberg is dead, this newspaper article excited him in 1969 and caused him to create this textspace. blaiberg was the first person to have a heart transplant and survive this operation, going on to live for a few years. 'one's own', the 'artificial', 'foreign', 'what the transplanted heart feels and thinks', 'who am I, awake and in a dream , 'artificial intelligence', 'a victory for science', 'flight to the moon', these questions, speculations, visions received a big shock with this sentence ‘blaiberg is dead'. to whatever, to franz mon the idea of

the octagonal mortuary, a room in which dead monks used to lie in wake, someone, or they, were waiting for something. 8 walls, all around the mortuary, each 220 x 220 cm large. they are covered with the sentence of the person i can't stand ...adolf is dead. maria is dead… and this in 11 columns and 11 languages. this white wall with clear black printed language is now darker on the next wall through a cutout and a transition and this is layered more and more from wall to wall with further transitions, the letters get bigger, but you can still see the small ones underneath, the layering of the names of the dead gives more information about the number of dead, including the inference that they have all lived before, but the whole thing gets darker up to the 7th wall, the black wall with a tiny spot in one corner, the completely black 8th wall is missing, you are suddenly at the bright entrance, and go out where others come in. a human story, with floor and ceiling. franz mon is controlling everything…