Manual/2: The Patient Artist

Manual/2: The Patient Artist is the prologue of Visser’s research into the field of psychological aid since the 1950s.

In the film, which shows excerpts from the earlier pieces, actor Simon Paisley Day reads descriptions written by different therapists from the artists’ file at the Psychoanalytical Institute. These texts are separated by introductions written by Emily LaBarge. 

Visser rarely considers the form which a work takes to be conclusive, at one point they have a certain form and five or ten years later they appear differently. Treating these key works as building blocks, Visser’s project for Kunstraum uses her past practice as pure material to be reworked and sampled. In reapproaching these works Visser has collaborated with a writer - Emily LaBarge - to recreate the accounts with more emphasis on their power as stories than their historical accuracy. 

First shown at Kunstraum, London

Made possible with the support of the Mondriaan Foundation, Elephant Trust, The Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands in the UK and the Akademie van Kunsten/KNAW, Nederland

Courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery

— Through a diversity of approaches over the past 25 years, Visser has consistently interrogated what it is to have artistic agency, reconfiguring the structures which surround us in contemporary art. Central to this new work for Kunstraum is the question of how the artist deals with their own history. For Manual/2: The Patient Artist Visser revisited four of her iconic works from the nineties that address the identity of the artist: Portrait of the Artist (1992), Ars Futura (1994), Gimines (1995) and The Lecture Series (1997/ 2004/ 2007).