XL NOTES

2025

Site-specific installation at Papiermachermuseum, Laakirchen, Austria

In her installation XL Notes, Xenia Lesniewski transforms handwritten notes, collected over many years as fragments of thoughts, memories, and questions, into oversized, carefully painted reproductions. Fleeting moments of thinking, which might otherwise have disappeared on scraps of paper, are given lasting presence and physical weight.

At a time when ideas are increasingly captured digitally, quickly and often automatically, Lesniewski returns to the materiality and tempo of analog thought. Her process goes beyond reproduction. It is a form of translation in which preservation and transformation are inseparable. The sheets are loosely distributed throughout the space, forming an open archive that does not ask to be read for meaning, but to be observed.

Margins, spacing, corrections and crossings-out, details usually considered secondary, become central through their scale. These elements gain their own visual and material presence. XL Notes does not present finished statements, but traces of thinking in motion. Hesitations, interruptions and unfinished lines remain visible and are treated as integral parts of the work.

The installation invites viewers to engage not as readers, but as witnesses to a process. Lesniewski’s enlarged notes create a quiet reflection on attention, fragility and the visibility of what is usually overlooked. The work opens a space of slowed perception in which doubt, presence and materiality come together.

Curated by Petra Zechmeister.

Installation shots Andrea Bier & Yvon Luca