Impossible Dreams was Pati Hill’s last published novel, released in 1976 after it was partially published two years earlier in the Carolina Quarterly under the title “An Angry French Housewife.” Hill tells the story of Geneviève, a middle-aged woman whose life is turned upside down when she unexpectedly falls in love with her neighbour, Dolly. Mixing anecdotes with existential thoughts, the novel describes the gradual disruption of the heroine’s daily life. Almost every chapter (the length of which varies from a single sentence to no more than three pages) is accompanied by a xerograph of a photograph, selected by Hill with permission from its maker. The resulting combination of text and image constitutes her most ambitious attempt to produce a work in which “the two elements fuse to become something other than either.”

One Thing I Know is Pati Hill’s third novel, first published in 1962, when she was forty-one and had just given birth to her first and only child. It is the last novel she wrote before claiming to “quit writing in favor of housekeeping”.

Untrained as an artist, she began to use the photocopier as an artistic tool in the early 1970s and continued to do so until her death, leaving behind an extensive oeuvre that explores the relationship between image and text. In addition to this comprehensive body of xerographic work, she published four novels, a memoir, several short stories, artist’s books, and poetry.

Afterword by Baptiste Pinteaux.

Pati Hill (b. 1921 in Ashland, Kentucky, USA; d. 2014 in Sens, France) was untrained as an artist and began to use the photocopier as an artistic tool in the early 1970s, continuing to do so until her death, leaving behind an extensive oeuvre that explores the relationship between image and text. In addition to this comprehensive body of xerographic work, she published four novels, a memoir, several short stories, artist’s books, and poetry. Drawing also became an essential part of her practice. In 1975, Hill published Slave Days, a book of 29 poems paired with photocopies of small household objects.

Exhibition booklet roduced on the occasion of Pati Hill: Something other than either at Kunstverein München, 7 March–16 August, 2020, Pati Hill’s first posthumous institutional solo exhibition in Europe. Hill left behind an artistic output spanning roughly 60 years and encompassing various disciplines. Untrained as an artist, she began to use the photocopier as an artistic tool in the early 1970s and continued to do so until her death, leaving behind an extensive oeuvre that explores the relationship between image and text.

The exhibition also considers her writing, publishing, and editing as practices that both question and accompany the visual work. As a fragmentary, necessarily incomplete index of her engagement with image and text (re-)production, the show includes published novels, poems, sketchbooks, unpublished manuscripts, and letters in addition to the xerographs.

A PDF of the booklet can be found here.

Reprint of Pati Hill’s 1979 book published on occasion of her first posthumous solo exhibition, Something other than either, at Kunstverein München on view from March through August 2020. The book is composed of images and texts by Hill through which she intended to contextualize and explain her working methodology to Jill Kornblee, her New York gallerist. Untrained as an artist, Pati Hill began to use the photocopier as an artistic tool in the early 1970s, leaving behind an extensive oeuvre that oscillates between image and text. Besides this comprehensive body of xerographic work, she published four novels, a memoir, several short stories, wrote poetry, and made drawings. Instead of an exhibition catalog that would offer an interpretation of her work, this publication provides space for Hill’s own writing that interrogates and accompanies her visual work.

A video tour of the exhibition can be seen here.

Octopus Notes is a biannual journal that publishes critical essays, academic writings, interviews and artists’ projects.The ninth issue brings together contributions by Ana Baliza, Tenzing Barshee, Tomas Cunha Ferreira, Alice Dusapin, Alexandre Estrela, Wade Guyton, Pati Hill, Merlin James, Justin Jaeckle, JGL, Greer Lankton, Douna Lim, Mark Melnicove, Paul Monroe, Adrian Morris, Lil Picard, Carlo Pittore, Bern Porter, Seth Price, Zoé Stillpass, Théo Robine-Langlois, Anne Turyn, Camille Vivier, Erika Vogt, Kelley Walker, and Martin Wrong.