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	LEBENSÜBERSICHT (LIFE SURVEY) 2002-2007 3 plans, 150cm x 100cm colored pencils on paper, stamp print Horizontal: time in % Vertical: age, life years Dividing Life’s Time „Lebensübersicht“(Life Survey) is a life-long project as it examines life itself and is also to be continued over a whole life time. Every five years, Seline Baumgartner records her past and project her future. The schematic drawings show, in percentages, how much times she used up annually for sleeping, training, art, work, leisure and relationships, whereby the red line of the present, the borderline between lived reality and imagined future, extends further and further downwards in the course of the years until, at 80 years of age, the life plan will have completely caught up with reality. Surveying also means ordering. Schemata are scientific means of analyzing and planning and they present facts in a graphic and usually simplified way. Just as communities encapsulate their future growth, possible developments and focal points in five-years plans, Baumgartner uses these representational forms for her life. Along the x-axis, time is marked in percentages; along the y-axis, the years run down from 0-80. The colours blue for sleep and yellow for leisure share the first six years between them and only than open like a curtain to make room for other activities. Where the coloured horizontal colour hatchings cross, denser vertical lines emerge, covering the plans with a rhythmical, wave-like structure. This gives rise to a painterly effect in contrast with the sobriety of the plan as a scientific instrument. In “ Lebensübersicht” Baumgartner observes herself as a young artist at the beginning of the 21st century. At the age of 25 she can no longer decide on one future and so makes two plans which branch into a life with children at the age of 35. The dilemma is symptomatic for our time, when the range of choices can be overwhelming. Text: Eveline Suter "Average" Exhibition Katalog, Kusthaus Langenthal, 2008