The Drawing Center

Alice Brooke, Prototypes, Graphite on paper, 11 7/16 x 7 7/8 inches each.

Reproduction is an archetypal trope in the science fictional imaginary. From the dystopian fable of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), in which fetuses are ‘cultivated’ in plantations outside the maternal body, to countless scenes of alien impregnation in other books and films, birth returns again and again to open up the allegorical field of evolution. Artist Alice Brooke’s beautiful Prototypes, on view at Unit E in London through January 7, partake of this imaginary.

Alice Brooke, Prototype, Graphite on paper, 11 7/16 x 7 7/8 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

Alice Brooke, Prototype, Graphite on paper, 11 7/16 x 7 7/8 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

From a distance, sixteen small drawings displayed in a grid resemble a colony of strange eggs. As one gets closer, the inside of each oval reveals a different mechanomorphic organism, encircled by an abstract pattern drawn with painstaking labor. Designed with the fine point of technical drawings, these abstract shapes hold sway over the imagination for their ambiguity—they evoke simultaneously advanced engines, hi-tech design, biological organs, and Japanese cyborgs. Here Brooke manages to convey a sense of the protean and uterine without being too literal about gender. The drawings operate at the level of abstract, un-gendered fantasy and yet they speak very powerfully of femininity.

One way to look at the grid is as a film reel in which an alien object undergoes continuous metamorphosis. Another is as a taxonomy of specimens—a family album of ‘prototypes’ in the making. Either way, a sense of temporal transmutation emerges from the series, which reflects on the artist’s technique.

The highly worked texture of these drawings bears testimony to a time-consuming engagement with the medium, in which unexpected variations may occur on a micro scale. Each prototype, then, is a test-bed for the practice of drawing.  Made on a template, they extend the metaphor of reproduction beyond birth and into the realm of repetition, developing a modus operandi in which the possibilities of an idea are tested until testing becomes part of the idea. If this is only an early prototype of what the young artist has in mind, the best is yet to come.

–Giulia Smith, Guest Contributor

Louise Despont, Bathing Constellation, Dusk, 2012. Graphite, colored pencil, and copper leaf on antique ledger book pages, 54 1/2 x 66 1/2 inches. Image courtesy of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery.

On December 13th, New York City and Montreal-based artist Louise Despont headlines the highly anticipated re-opening of Nicelle Beauchene’s gallery on Broome Street, in an historic two-story building to be shared with Jack Hanley Gallery. Continuing her quest to get close to paper—to admire its quality and examine its imperfections—Despont’s latest body of drawings showcase the depth of her signature supports. Using antique ledgers scavenged from across the globe, Despont insists on the histories, shifting parameters, and disembodied pictorial effects of her source material.  In this, her approach to geometric abstraction is not strictly formalist, but a means of structuring larger, more transcendental ideas about the world.

Guided by the ledgers’ ruled lines and patina, the artist fills their in-between spaces with spidery ink beds and intricate detailing. Graphite serves as a mainstay in the execution and ideology of her hand-drawn lines. It is often rubbed directly onto the surface with a cloth, challenging the scaffold of the gridded paper. This skillful process, aided by the artist’s use of architectural stencils, drafting tools, and compasses, culminates in ornate and fantastical designs.

Louise Despont, The Host, 2012. Graphite and colored pencil on antique ledger book pages, 27 1/2 x 33 1/2 inches. Image courtesy of Nicelle Beauchene Gallery.

Despont draws inspiration for her art from both her observable reality and the uncanny ‘otherworld.’ Each work is composed of repeating visual motifs—concentric circles, spikey triangles, hatched diamonds—that provide a conduit through which to achieve higher cognitive levels. Take for example The Host (2012), in which firmly-drawn curvatures and sharp angles, though static, appear to pulsate with subterranean reverberations upon prolonged inspection. Despont’s optical interplays generate an abstract art that leaves the subject-viewer to rely not only on sight, but also on intuition and sensation.

With drawing typically under­stood to be an inherently intimate activity that privileges time, care, and attention, the labor-intensive works on view counteract the rapid barrage of imagery that defines our digital age. There is value in the high effort they evince, as if the attention is itself a form of self-reflection—a testament to the astonishing power and slow pleasures that abide in Despont’s hand.

–Joanna Kleinberg Romanow, Assistant Curator

Gego installing Reticulárea, CIAR (now Americas Society), 1969. Courtesy of Fundación Gego, Caracas.

Gego—the German-born, Venezuela-transplanted artist also known as Gertrude Goldschmidt—careened fearlessly across media throughout her career, working in sculpture, collage, installation and textiles. However, she ultimately considered her work to be based in drawing. This continual return to drawing as an originary medium was the subject of The Drawing Center’s 2007 exhibition Gego, Between Transparency and the Invisible. This fall through December 8th, Americas Society presents an exhibition that begins with the artist’s earliest works on paper and highlights her forays into textiles as well as the development of her singular Reticuláreas: huge, spider web-like constructions of wires that feel vast and light at the same time.

A reticule is a net of lines used for measurement in the eyepiece of a sighting device such as a telescope or microscope; a common example is the crosshairs of a gun. Gego’s Reticuláreas—her own neologism—splay and disperse the grid across their environments, taking over the rooms they inhabit. Americas Society’s exhibition, Gego: Origin and Encounter, Mastering the Space, takes its title from a statement Gego made about the potential of the work to “master the space that reason dominates (or tries to).”

Gego (Gertrud Goldschmidt), Untitled, 1969. Ink on cardboard. Courtesy of Fundación Gego, Caracas.

This attempt to wrest control from reason took many forms, leading the artist, trained as an architect, to skillfully complicate the relationship between the flat plane and three-dimensionality. Her overlapping of geometric formalism onto notions of shelter and public space has encouraged debate among scholars over whether her Reticuláreas should be situated in a localized, socio-political context or within a more general framework of geometric abstraction. Indeed, these large-scale works resonate with and inform Gego’s early drawings, which depict geographical landscapes—the Venezuelan countryside with which the German émigré was becoming familiar—slipping into abstract forms. The soft grids of the Reticuláreas also cast new light on her textiles: comprised of carefully plotted parallel lines, the fabric works also retain a comforting, domestic presence. In each of these bodies of work, Gego bends geography and geometry to problematize rather than regulate her forms and ideas.

– Nova Benway, Curatorial Assistant

Due to the continuing effects of the storm, The Drawing Center’s Grand Reopening Reception will now take place next Wednesday, November 7, 6-9pm. Please go to here to read more about that event.

We are happy to share with you that The Drawing Center did not sustain  any damage due to Hurricane Sandy, but without power downtown we cannot re-open until next week.

Jakob Boeskov, Untitled (Dear James Cameron), 2012. Image courtesy of Mulherin + Pollard, New York.

The future lies in the hands of James Cameron.  Or so the suite of films and works on paper by Danish-Icelandic artist Jakob Boeskov (b. 1973) attempts to convince viewers of his exhibition Weekend Futurology, on view at Mulherin + Pollard Gallery through this Sunday.

Boeskov’s crisp delivery of the future-present includes drawings of big bad Internet corporations, pulp sci-fi gadgets, and a lot of Xanax—all mixing lightly with the heavy air of paranoia. Drawing from the lexicons of science fiction, technology, and politics, Boeskov’s films and drawings reverberate with the same energy of the lunar landing, playfully critiquing the present state of society and technology along the way.

Adapting the visual iconography of sci-fi classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Boeskov creates a retro-sleek techno-eroticism. A pair of sexualized anthropomorphic search engines—part-furry with vintage digital screens—and a list of Florian Mann’s recent Wikipedia searches compile playful anecdotes of our mounting social and sexual dependence on internet technologies. The illustrative quality of many of the works hint at the artist’s comic-making background, and the text, drawn in a clean uppercase, delivers the dark humor punch line of many of Boeskov’s pictures.

While the content of his drawings seduces viewers to contemplate Boeskov’s forecast for the future, his choice of the pastel medium engages with the history of art and drawing, filling his work with gleefully mischievous contradictions. Many works comment on the dehumanized state of society after the arrival of large Internet-based corporations like Facebook and Google; however, Boeskov is intent on delivering them a human punch. His loose, unpolished renderings of an Internet robot exacting retribution and carefully modeled diagram of a “Facebook gun” are equal parts dire and delightful.

Jakob Boeskov, Untitled (Google), 2012. Image courtesy of Mulherin + Pollard, New York.

In one striking image, Untitled (Google) (2012), sculpted clouds shot through with rays from a dramatic sunset appear below the neon alien glow of the Google logo. The imperfection of the outlined letters collides with our associations of this pristine emblem of web design. Here, the artist’s hand reassures the viewer that at least one person believes that drawing cannot be outmoded.

Evidence amassed, Boeskov builds a case for his paranoia. Yet, his quick lines, casual misfires, and intentional cross-outs remind viewers that this is the work of a fevered weekend ruminator, the Star Trek child who still cherishes science fiction. The collection of drawings and films at Mulherin + Pollard invite anyone who has ever thought about their internet presence to embrace and question the future-present vortex, too.

– Genevieve Wollenbecker, Visitor Services Manager

Installation view, Josh Faught: Longtime Companion. June 21–August 24, 2012, Lisa Cooley, New York. Image courtesy of Lisa Cooley, New York.

For the artist Josh Faught, the representation of queer subjectivity is inextricable from other forms of cultural identity. The concurrent comfort and terror of suburbia, for example, have loomed ever larger in his artistic lexicon, along with self-help culture and its attendant hypochondria. These issues are linked through Faught’s commitment to under-recognized, community-based practices like weaving and crocheting—skills he learned partly from his grandmother and great-grandmother, but also from classes at summer camp. He has said he learned to weave before learning to draw, and it’s clear that working in textiles allows him to intertwine the conceptual threads of his practice.

Josh Faught, Palindrome, 2011. Sequins, cochineal, spray paint, and hemp on linen, 43 x 36 x 2 inches. Image courtesy of Lisa Cooley, New York.

In Longtime Companion, Faught’s current exhibition at Lisa Cooley, however, the importance of the line “drawn” in fabric becomes evident. Large rectangular compositions of woven hemp and wool are mounted, painting-like, on linen. But their construction hardly holds to a grid: sequins, birthday cards, letters, protest buttons and other kitschy adornments interrupt the work’s surface, and the ragged, loopy lines Faught binds into the fabric make the hand of the artist much more evident than in most loomwork, which often reveals the skill of its creator through the impeccable intricacy of combined stitches. On each work’s surface, thick pockets of fabric cluster haphazardly, recalling both cocoon-like protective shelters and sinister, impenetrable crevices. Again, the zigzagging lines “drawn” into the fabric corrupt its smooth vertical/horizontal grain, adding depth to the artist’s investigation of the ominous aspects of comfort.

Josh Faught, How to Make Somethings From Nothings, 2012. Jacquard woven reproduction from the AIDS quilt, laminated legal advertisement, cotton, glittered clothespin, cochineal, indigo, and handwoven hemp on linen, 78 1/2 x 51 1/2 inches. Image courtesy of Lisa Cooley, New York

Faught has expressed an interest in “support structures,” whether physical—as with the trellis-like stands on which some of his wall works rest—or psychological, as with the trove of self-help books, inspirational pins and even fabric renditions of pies (which somehow look both cozy and delicious) arranged throughout the gallery. Other elements of the exhibition include two cabin-like cedar structures partially wrapped in large-scale woven reproductions of PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) newsletters. These decades-old, earnest documents of a support community in formation are juxtaposed with stacks of best-selling crime novels with titles like The Stranger Beside Me. And then there are Faught’s reproductions of panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt—an ongoing, collective project commemorating individual lives lost to the disease—interspersed with woven chapter titles from an emergency preparedness book: “Difficulties Breathing,” “Burn Care,” “Police at the Door,” etcetera.  The show oscillates dramatically between the conflicting potentials for sheltering spaces and comforting objects to protect and nurture, or to obscure and disguise.

Bunches of thick fibers, unraveling threads, knots that secure and bind—Faught’s draughtsman-like handling of his fabrics repeatedly nods to traditions of drawing. Each stitch, which might have been rendered mechanically, is instead imbued with contradictory and surprising meanings.

– Nova Benway, Curatorial Assistant

Ellsworth Kelly, Wild Grape, 1961. Watercolor on paper, 22 1/8 x 28 1/2 inches. Private collection. © Ellsworth Kelly. Photograph courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

For people seeking a taste of summer without the blazing heat, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exquisite exhibition of Ellsworth Kelly’s plant drawings, on view through September 3rd, provides the perfect occasion.  Featuring approximately eighty drawings dating from 1948 during the artist’s time in Paris to his most recent work made in upstate New York, this intimate show reveals another side to the abstract painter that nonetheless makes perfect sense.  The plant drawings are essentially contour drawings executed primarily in pencil or pen—although there are isolated spots of color in the exhibition, like a rosy red heap of apples from 1949 (Kelly made a pencil version that same year), a bright green stalk of corn (1959), and a sunshine yellow tulip (also 1959).  Kelly has called the plant drawings “a kind of bridge to a way of seeing that was the basis of the very first abstract paintings,”[i] and indeed, both the botanical renderings and Kelly’s abstract compositions aim to strip things down to their basic shapes and contours, supplying the minimal amount of information necessary to understand a form.

Ellsworth Kelly, Sweet Pea, 1960. Graphite on paper, 22 9/16 x 28 inches. The Baltimore Museum of Art, Thomas E. Benesch Memorial Collection. © Ellsworth Kelly. Photograph courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Still, with their fragile edges and delicate lines, Kelly’s plant drawings have an emotional charge that is distinct from that of his abstract work.  Kelly asserts in an interview in the exhibition catalogue that the renderings are “portraits of flowers, not anonymous,” and Kelly’s own predilections and desires seem to emerge as we follow the development of his oak leaves, tulips, lilies, and his ever favored wild grape over time.  His gently climbing Wild Grape from 1960 is achingly beautiful while his spiky off-kilter cactus from 1980 is laugh-out-loud funny.  This awkward fellow provides a striking contrast with the gently unfurling calla lily placed opposite (2006) and the latter in turn with a pair of scraggly lilies from three decades prior (1980).  If these images perfectly capture the changing natural world, they also seem to reflect Kelly’s state of mind while drawing—as he himself tells us, “the most pleasurable thing in the world for me is to see something and then translate how I see it.” [ii]

– Claire Gilman, Curator

[ii] Quoted in wall text.

Albrecht Dürer, Salvator Mundi, Oil on wood, 22 7/8 x 18 1/2 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Friedsam Collection, Bequest of Michael Friedsam, 1931.

Any survey of Central European work of the Northern Renaissance must contend with the dominating artistic personality of Albrecht Dürer. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s current exhibition Dürer and Beyond: Central European Drawings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1400 – 1700 sets out to place him in the context of a diverse and vital tradition of drawing without allowing him to overshadow his contemporaries and those who came after.

Martin Schongauer, Man in a Hat Gazing Upward, Before 1480. Pen and dark brown ink, with traces of a preliminary drawing in a darker ink, on pinkish prepared paper (with red ocher?), 5 1/8 x 3 13/16 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975.

Curators Stijn Alsteens and Freyda Spira have laid out more than 100 works in what is essentially a survey of the Met’s collection of Central European Old Master drawings, many of which have been acquired in the last two decades. The show opens with two delightful anonymous Bohemian drawings, both of them very early and very rare. Martin Schongauer, an early influence on Dürer, is represented by a very important character study. Dürer himself is represented by 5 works on paper (including the iconic pen and ink self-portrait) and the unfinished painting Salvator Mundi. The inclusion of this piece provides the visitor with the opportunity to see Dürer’s extensive and complex underdrawing. Indeed, many of the drawings in the exhibition were executed as studies for works to be realized in other media – painting, metalwork, stained glass. But the meticulous care that many of the artists took and the multiple iterations in chalk, ink, and wash that the drawings passed through indicate an approach to each drawing as a work independent of its ultimate realization in another medium.

Artists outside of Nuremberg, where Dürer worked and where his influence was most keenly felt, are well-represented in the exhibition. However, after Dürer, no dominating artistic personality emerged in Central Europe, and the latter half of the exhibition feels somewhat diffuse, lacking the focus that Dürer provides in the first gallery. Still, there are many charming and idiosyncratic drawings on view that give testimony to the breadth and variety of drawing in Central Europe between 1400 and 1700. Works by Hans Baldung and Peter Flotner exhibit a sophisticated and playful sexuality; works by Hans Hoffman show a burgeoning interest in closely-observed renderings of the natural world, taken up later by Jacob Marrel and Johann Jakob Walther; and a startling work by the Monagrammist AW shows an exploration of perspective and foreshortening reminiscent of, if not nearly as well-executed as, those of Mantegna. One of the more uncommon inclusions is a drawing for a “thesis print” by Jonas Umbach. Thesis prints were commissioned on the occasion of a dissertation defense, and integrated the text of the candidate’s thesis, often along with a dedication to a powerful patron or potential patron, into a composition of overwrought iconography.

Although few of the artists are household names, aside from Dürer, the sophistication and artistry of Central European drawing during the Northern Renaissance makes this exhibition very much worth a visit. –Champ Knecht, Director of Finance and Administration