L'Empreinte was a group show, at Olivier Malingue gallery in London, exploring how the act and the imagery of the imprint has had an impact on modern and contemporary art.
The imagery we often associate with the term "imprint" is the one of a feral stamp, left without intention on a path by "someone or something". The mark on the soil becomes proof of a past presence, while making the viewer an indirect witness of its passage. In the exhibition, imprint-related processes, techniques and mediums allow a wide range of alternatives in relation to the development of an artistic body of work. Featuring works that are the result of direct imprints on a surface or the representation of visual narratives associated to the domain of the imprint.
The exhibition included works by Cai Gui-Qiang, Jean Dubuffet, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Sam Francis, Glenn Ligon, Ed Ruscha, Rudolf Stingel, Christopher Wool, among others.
by Ohne Titel's exhibited work was from the One too many.. series, made up of several personal past to-do-lists that the artist decided to recycle and re-significate by making them part of their practice. The resulting pieces are abstract assemblages of either accurate past agendas or conceptual memories. They chart personal attachments and geographic displacements.
As Emily LaBarge wrote in her essay, which was commissioned to accompany the exhibition, "The perfect stain is the one we live inside of every day, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not; the one that it is our duty to investigate, for it is clear that human beings make their mark-their imprint, l'empreinte-wherever they go".