Das Kanalisationsproblem zu lösen: das Kanalisationsproblemlösungsbuch. (Solving the Sewer Problem: The Sewer-Solving-Problem-Book).65

(Düsseldorf.)., (1969).. Original card boards with white paper label with manuscript title in black ink to front cover, white paper label with with signature and date to rear inner cover, boards with shrink wrap covering (as issued?).. Square 4to. (242 x 222 mm).. Leaves of folded wove paper each with drawing in black ink and / or collage elements throughout (see below). The unique artist book / maquette of scatological drawings and collage by Jan Voss.The pages depict an individual, from the drawings clearly a male, who approaches and sits on a toilet and appears to excrete a black bird. The bird then takes flight and, in a serious of collages of colour paper pasted direct to the doubled sheets of wove paper with clear tape, extrudes its own excretions over water before flying off.Voss later used these images as the basis for a section of his 1971 artist book, 'Piss Buch: 4 Gedichten von Young [sic] Voss'. The final section, as here, is titled 'Das Kanalisationsproblemlösungsbuch'. Jan Voss (born 1945 in Hildesheim) studied at Düsseldorf's Kunst Akademie in the later 1960s and early 1970s where he met Dieter Roth; both artists were to make the artist book a major facet of their practices. Voss is lauded in Martin Kippenberger's book 'Dieses Leben kann nicht die Ausrede für das nächste sein' along with Dieter Roth, another artist known for his artist books, by the collector Ira Wool. Kippenberger quotes Wool's letter to Gisela Capitain: 'I should rank him [Kippenberger] with the two who are in my opinion the best makers of artist's books - Dieter Roth (who is nearest to God) and Jan Voss ... '; high praise indeed.