Chris Warren and Auto Studio present the Exhibition RSI.

Since the publication of Pitman’s Typewriter Manual in 1893, with its page of ‘decorative ornaments’ with which writers might embellish their texts, the use of the typewriter as a machine for creative expression has become a medium all of its own. Early typewriter art simply used the typewriter as a replacement for pen and paper rather than as a response to the unique limitations and opportunities offered by the machine itself. Since then, however, the spatial and mechanical reliability of the machine has been capitalised upon to great effect in an increasing variety of ways, helping to cement typewriter art as one of the most idiosyncratic visual art forms practiced today. In a world that is becoming digitalized faster than it is possible to comprehend, work of this type has arguably become even more important.

Each of the works that comprise RSI are a quiet thank you to the machine on which they were made. They simply could not have been produced by any other means. They have all been made using one single ribbon, with the later works becoming what they are by the inevitable running-out of ink on the reel or the slow degradation of the typeface through hours of repeated use. Each piece in this collection has been produced as a response to the one before; contain surprises and frustrations that weren’t at all intended when the idea was conceived and have within them a playful sense of movement designed to confound the static nature of the machine from which they came. The production of this collection has been nothing short of an obsessive love affair.

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Chris Warren is a Beijing-based artist and writer from London, U.K. His first collection ‘Pareidolia’; a series of six works exploring the psychological phenomenon of seeing patterns where none actually exist, was exhibited at Más in June of 2016. He is primarily interested in text-based art forms and language games, and supports Beijing’s creative community as host of the Spittoon Fiction night and as fiction editor for the bi-annual Spittoon Literary Magazine.

Opening: 17. FEB 2017

Time: 18:00

Free entrance