Yappanoise

In later works, such as the Yappanoise series (from 2008 onward), the reference to language becomes even more explicit. Yappanoise consists of large-format horizontal works. The center of each sheet is framed in relief-like fashion by two horizontal waterlines running along the upper and lower edges. Vertical ink lines of varying lengths—mostly drips and runs—extend rhythmically from the top or bottom edge toward the center, setting the tempo. In between, the subtle music of small, understated, occasionally colored dots comes into play.

Kröner himself speaks of music in relation to Yappanoise: “The rhythmic pacing of the sheet and the freely floating all-over composition are, for me, a kind of visual music. I see and hear here a score, paper-noise.” The title of the series refers to the neologism “Yappanoise,” coined by James Joyce in Finnegans Wake. There, it signifies noise or clamor, while also evoking the words “Japan” and the English “noise.” Yappanoise combines the musical with the Japanese—with ink drawing and the aesthetics of Zen painting associated with figures such as Sengai and Hakuin, both of whom Kröner admires. We will return to this point later.

For the artist, Joyce’s invented language Yappanoise serves as a synonym for the visual system that every draftsman develops. “What fascinates me about drawing is that anyone who claims their own territory through drawing simultaneously invents an entire universe, a completely new language.” Referring to Inger Christensen’s long poem Alphabet, he speaks of graphic elements as though they were vocabulary. Alphabet attempts to articulate existence, its emergence, and the very real danger of its destruction through the systematic enumeration of things, adhering to strict structures—namely the alphabet and the Fibonacci sequence. Within the poem, each thing exists in and of itself within a structure that unfolds inexorably onward.

From: Harald Kröner und das Ohne-Tun des überzeugten Zeichners, Martina Köppel-Yang, Paris, June 2021. More