Hanne Darboven was a member of the first generation of conceptual artists. She saw numbers, classification systems and repetitions as non-descriptive forms of writing. Her sequential oeuvre has a romantic, subjective, almost obsessive character and takes an abstract approach to reality. Like a bookkeeper, Darboven attempted to conquer time day by day, page by page, book by book; or at least to measure time in divisions which are functional for herself, but unfathomable for us. Her almost forcibly neurotic work, which is awash with figures, numbers expressed in words and diagrams, runs into thousands of pages.
