For years I have always experienced the work of graphic designer and illustrator Karl Nawrot (aka Walter Warton) in fragments—an occasional image on his website, a record cover, a few pages in the Werkplaats Typografie compendium Wonder Years. His mix of design, illustration, architecture, stencils, stamps, and typefaces hinted at a practice that mixed moments of structure and intricacy with primitive elements and gestural markings. Shrouded in grayscale, Nawrot’s work left me intrigued, wanting to know more about the connective tissue between bits and pieces uncovered from out-of-print, short-run publications. His most recent book Mind Walks (2018, Rollo Press), however, pulls back the curtain, revealing a prolific practice in 900 images of work produced between 2004 and 2017. The dense publication is interspersed with abstract texts from James Langdon that seem to subvert any indication of structure or narrative between pages, promoting instead the benefits of wandering, questioning, and getting lost. In the interview below I chat with Nawrot about Mind Walks, the process of sorting through your own archives, and the futility of closing your own chapters.
Ben Schwartz (BS)
It seems that for the bulk of your career much of your work has been relatively hard to find. Being such an admirer of your practice I’ve often found myself refreshing your website hoping to stumble upon some new image. With the book, you’re very generous with how much you choose to show (900 images of work!), which is beautiful to finally see. Was there any particular reason that you decided to release the book at this time?
Karl Nawrot (KN)
Thank you very much, Ben. Perhaps the main reason for the publication is connected to a series of exhibitions entitled Mind Walk that I produced over the past four years in different galleries or art spaces (Birmingham, Seoul, Pau, and Leipzig). I wanted to conclude the exhibition cycle by making a book about all the pieces I had shown, and the ones I couldn’t. In a few words, I wanted to tell the whole story. Knowing that I would release this book, I restrained myself from updating my website during that period. Generally, I don’t feel very comfortable showing too much of my own work (it’s already noisy enough outside). I see my practice as a continuous line where all the projects are connected in some way, and the internet has a tendency to cut strings. Another reason for releasing the book is simply the fact that I was tired of carrying all these images in my mind. I wanted to get rid of them, to start over. I truly feel lighter since publishing Mind Walks.
BS
It seems that an element of Mind Walks is about getting lost in the work. Both the title and the cover image emphasize an act of wandering—a détournement, of sorts. In the book, there is an index but no page numbers, which forces one to interact with the content on a much more intuitive level. There is a puzzle-like quality to it all where we are given an openness to form our own narrative. I’m curious how you feel these notions of elusiveness and obscurity relate to your work?
KN
Of course these notions are important to my work in general, but specifically in this project I am choosing to talk about a graphic design practice from the inside (behind the eyes, inside the skull). I wanted to give the feeling of walking through someone’s mind (a landscape), where pieces of thoughts and memories are not attached to each other in a totally coherent way. Something more closely related to sleepwalking maybe. I am aware that some readers will find this feeling uncomfortable, but it’s the way I choose to talk about my practice, and I still hope that some will accept to get lost.
BS
Could you talk about the book’s organization (or maybe lack thereof)? What was the process like sorting through works? Is there any particular order to the image sequencing?
KN
It took nine months exactly to complete the book, and during the process I stopped working as a graphic designer. The hardest part was to collect, scan, and print the full archive, which at the end consisted of, more or less, 4,000 images. I had to rebuild some of my models that were broken or lost, and I had to shoot 90 new photographs. The order was not really a problem because I already had some existing skeletons assembled for lectures or exhibitions. So, I simply started to make each project as a booklet, and I organized them like scenes in a movie, linked by interludes (for that, I mainly used the two largest projects—Templates for Records and Drawing Templates—that I sequenced). But I can totally imagine, as it’s already suggested by the missing pagination, that the order could be totally different. This book is not a finished object: it’s a loop where everything can shift.
BS
Amidst all of the work, I noticed you chose to not show any of your typefaces. Was there any particular reason for this?
KN
In a previous version of the book, James and I wanted to add some typefaces I designed inside his texts (something we already did in the Mind Walk II exhibition ephemera), but in the end I decided not to keep them. I thought it would weaken the idea of having these two singular narratives which haunt each other. But I have to say that I placed some in the book, discretely. In these cases, I chose to show only the letter O (for obvious reason) when I felt it was needed in the story.
BS
I can imagine a book like this to be a daunting task. I’m curious about any collaborators or people you sought out for feedback. I’m thinking here of James Langdon and Urs Lehni of Rollo Press. What sort of input did they have in the process?
KN
I worked on the book in a very closed circle. James and Urs followed the whole process and I often needed their feedback to move forward. The person who was the most present and closest to the project was my girlfriend, Laurence. For the most part, the process was smooth, as I had quite a clear image of the publication from its inception. All of the image compositions were finished in May and it didn’t change much until the end in October. It was also important to keep an element of roughness to the publication. Most of the discussions we had were about the texts and how to place them in the main structure.
BS
As you mention, breaks in the publication come in the form of short texts written by James Langdon. Could you talk a bit about how these texts came about?
KN
When James had invited me to exhibit my work at Eastside Projects, I asked him to write a text for the show. It became a bit of a tradition, and James wrote a new text for each of the subsequent exhibitions in the Mind Walk series. I never wanted to have a critical essay that explained the exhibited pieces. Rather, I was more interested in having a voice or a whisper that would inhabit the exhibition space. I wanted the texts to help illustrate the particular feelings of confrontation between the landscape that the viewer is moving in and the thoughts that are scratching its surface. To come back to the book, James and I agreed that the texts needed to build a similar feeling, and I left him free to write his own story that would haunt the publication. In the end, he came up with a very singular text that, in my opinion, mixes both of our DNA with a part of his interest in human brain research.
BS
There is a primitive element to your work, both with the tools you use and at times the outcomes they create. I’m curious if this instinct informed the design of the publication at all?
KN
The book is pretty straightforward in its form and content, and my choices for this book were mostly instinctive. It’s a very primitive approach where the text and the images are separated and never cross—a decomposition of graphic design language, in some way. The grid is based on a paper template that I used to set some drawings in my sketchbooks, and the text composition is an enlarged version of what James and I have done for the exhibition ephemera. There are no special effects added; I simply wanted a large pocketbook.
BS
The tools you construct have always amazed me. On the surface, they appear simple and raw, but with these elements you create such beautiful and intricate compositions. Over the years has your relationship to these tools changed at all?
KN
Since I started to have an interest in graphic design, I always felt the need to develop my own tools or modify the common use of existing ones. In early 2000, a friend and I were making new alphabets from bits of Letraset’s letters and a fax machine. Not long after, I started to design some ink stamps, and later came the drawing templates that I use to trace letterforms or draw abstract compositions for record sleeves. Lately, I have expanded my definition of “tool.” For example, the project A Piece of White Noise III doesn’t seem to be a tool at first, but it was conceived only for the purpose of drawing the track of a ghost train. I should also mention the series of plaster models based on Marcel Breuer constructions that helped me to develop and contextualize the font Breu. Soon I will work on a new machine, based on light, that has been stuck in my mind for a long time. I hope it will work out.
BS
Do you refer back to your past work often? What sort of reaction did you feel when digging back through your archive?
KN
I won’t say I refer to my past work consciously; it happens often by accident. Recently, for example, I was finishing an illustration when I realized that I had placed inside the painting some elements from an older work—a distorted version projected in another dimension. I like that kind of discovery; it helps me to place the new work inside the circle. For Mind Walks, being so deeply concentrated on my past work would at times leave me depressed or tired. In the process, though, there were moments of excitement when I would find something that would reignite a forgotten spot in my brain.
BS
Publishing more than 900 images of work is quite a feat, and I’m sure it would give pause for reflection. Did you have any new thoughts about the evolution of your practice? Did it give you any thoughts about your work as you move forward?
KN
With this publication, I tried to close a chapter, but I am not sure yet if that’s possible. As a graphic designer it’s hard to make a pause, and maybe that’s a good thing because I want to avoid over-analyzing my work. My practice evolves with the projects and the relationship I have with the people I work with. So now, I simply want to continue working.
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