Kleckner’s new repertoire of form is based on an on-going series of paper collages that he started making in 2012. They contain fragments from significant references to art history, photos, graphic designs, snippets of global pop culture and much more besides. Many of these collages have never been translated into a painting, while others have been processed several times over with variations. But Kleckner does not cling slavishly to his own templates. Ultimately, the colors and shapes are always varied. Thus every painting is liberated from its precursor, and by the end of the process two solitaires have been created. Kleckner refers to them as “carefully planned accidents”.

In the collages themselves there are no text elements to be found – at least, almost none. For although Kleckner himself dispenses with cut-out letters, each collage bears an enigmatic title printed at the bottom of the page: a number followed by a lengthy dash, followed in turn by two or three blanks, a question mark and ending with a year. The pages with these enigmatic titles were taken from the exhibition catalogue for Joseph Beuys’ The Secret Block for a Secret Person in Ireland. Beuys attributed these combinations to the 296 works in his Block of 456 drawings, which had no specific titles of their own. The number in front is the running inventory number and changes accordingly. Kleckner could not resist this blend of both the “impenetrable and mysterious” and the “pseudo-scientific and specific”. It allowed him to appropriate and apply a systematic framework for his own Block, which he eventually called Questions for a Secret Person in Iowa.

Kleckner’s first encounter with the work of the legendary German action artist and inventor of the Social Sculpture was a determining moment in his artistic development. As a student he came across two small volumes about Beuys’ early drawings that shook his views of art – and what it could and should do – to the core. In the next few years, the idea that reproductions, like those of Beuys’ works, might function as a springboard for his own original work began to take shape. Now Kleckner’s creations have been reproduced in his first monographic exhibition catalogue – and they in turn can serve other artists as a basis for originals of their own. It is potentially a chain reaction, and Kleckner certainly sees the funny side of it.