Starting in the early 2000s, Valentin Hirsch (b. Eschwege, 1978; lives and
works in Berlin) worked dot for dot to construct his monstrously graceful ink
drawings and etchings, a technique he compared to a tattoo artist's. In 2010,
he took the leap and switched from tracing paper to human skin. Drawing
into skin is an irreversible act. Hirsch's tattoos--he works exclusively in black
ink--eschew all pretense, but their existence is also bound to a body and a
life. The motifs in Hirsch's tattoos reflect this ambivalence of the medium:
beasts and shockingly comely skulls...