untitled 1983

The works of the 1980s (cat. no. 15, 16) are marked by Bischoffshausen's progressive blindness, which he attributes to the toxins to which he was exposed when working with PVC putty. As before, he works in series that bear "Seer" or "Prophet" in their titles, defining the images, as it were, as heralds of divine wisdom. He uses "anthropomorphic forms in which he inserts basic elements from the reservoir of his structural reliefs" . These can be read as organs of perception - a surface left blank becomes an open mouth, "a series of pressed holes in a bead" becomes the "substitute for an eye-part." The combination of these building blocks, already present in earlier works, with raw cardboard seems more impetuous, more vehement: "This kind of plastic graphic is new in the oeuvre.... (he) has left behind the criteria of monochrome" and creates a haunting late work despite his increasing blindness.