The two boards about one meter high are hung next to each other on the wall, edge to edge. These are pieces of drywall that are used in construction and interior architecture. The grey boards are industrially produced and yet still not perfect. One can see defects and injuries. Some look like lacerations, others like grazes or scratches. The largest injury is found up top on the board on the right, an almost horizontal cut. Other defects are more punctiform. There are also abraded sections on the other board. In all of them, a dark color appears. It is black, sometimes mixed with green or yellow. One supposes that the dark is the base coat, but it is the opposite. Anita Leisz paints the surface with a tinted stain. After application, it is washed off. The color stays where storage, transport, and handling have caused small injuries. The color functions like a medical contrast-agent. More than just insulator, the boards become a metaphor, a personal template or memorial. Hanging as a diptych, an image emerges that is as touchable and superficially sensitive as skin. The work was initially on view as part of a cooperative exhibition with Nora Schultz in the Viennese gallery Meyer Kainer. Terms that hovered around both artists were “linen” and “body-parts.” The fine marks clearly belong to the “body-part” works, as Leisz admits in conversation. And these boards are really like pale skin, portraits of blanched vulnerability, the undercoat of existence that comes to the surface, when the film of illusions is worn away.

Thomas D. Trummer, 2015 (translation: Virginia Dellenbaugh)