exhibition
Opening June 14: NEW DRAWINGS Juried Exhibition

About the exhibition

NEW DRAWINGS

Periodically, the artistic powers that be declare that painting is dead, but no one ever seems to say that about drawing, which gloriously persists.  Thank goodness, then, there are places like Kentler International Drawing Space, which celebrate and platform the medium in all of its diversity:  of material, of subject, and of spirit.  The new and recent works in this juried exhibition, organized to mark Kentler’s 35th anniversary, testify to that perseverance and range.  

The 76 selected drawings – which I reviewed with pleasure and chose with care from an avalanche of exciting entries – bear the distinctive voices of 77 artists from around the world.  Yet common concerns between these works emerge that may tell us some useful things about what drawing can be, and do, today.  Many of these works on paper further ideas we hold about the medium:  its inherent intimacy and indexicality, its focus on the possibilities of line, or its complicity with language.  Others productively upend those associations.  The works assembled here are rigorous, technically achieved, and engaged with art histories.  They are also loose and fresh and sensitive and funny, engaged with the world.

If we start with line, the way many drawings do, we might consider a conversation between Elena Gluth, whose marks register movement, and Erin Parsch, whose work in performance explains her drawing’s suggestion of a score.  JoAnn Ugolini lends her line to capturing the buzzy energy of a gathering, while Rita Maas gives a similar treatment to the breezy flora of Wave Hill.  

Deploying the structure of the grid, Yana Volkovich orders nature’s forms into a field.  In Elvia Perrin’s monoprint, the botanical becomes abstract, while Betty Wilde Biasiny wields watercolor to express vegetation at its most explicitly verdant.  Even as Zachary Skinner’s flooded landscape conjures the specter of climate change, its spirals infuse eco-pessimism with a haunting beauty.  Those swirls have something to say to the ripples in Josh Kramb’s composition, which recall the currents on the surface of water or the wood grain achieved from a rubbing.  That linear rhythm resonates with a drawing by Sally Gil, whose striations seem related to time, and memory.     

In subtle graphite, Mariella Bisson renders the relationship between water and rock–one, eventually, sure to erode the other.  This play between flowing cascade and solid mass reminds me of the fluid, more abstract passages of a work by Marisa Rappard.  A drawing by Carla Crawford lingers in the ambiguity between landscape and pure form:  Is this a cloud of smoke erupting from a land mass?  Or a celebration of charcoal’s inherent capacity for smokiness?  Shannon Lee and Hannah-Rose Albinus similarly coax a full range of tones—and ambiguous references—from velvety pencil.

Speaking of abstraction, I am always amazed at how infinite geometry’s possibilities can be, especially when coupled with thoughtful exploration of color.  Leticia Wouk Almin, Anna Moore, Alex Rudinski, James Bills, and Mirjana Ciric each deliver hard edges with fresh sensitivity.  Maintaining that bold formal approach—even as their works incorporate, describe, or suggest recognizable things in the world—are compositions by Juan Hinojosa, Anne Hamilton, and Mio Olssen.

Equally colorful, but more organic, are the works of Pinkney Herbert, Gail Nathan, and Jacob Rhoads, which introduce a vivid language of muscular abstraction.  Such meaty passages of form, now reduced to monochrome, extend to explorations by Molly Heron, Anne Trauben, Dique Miller, and Edwin Weitz.  The machinic quality of Weitz’s composition introduces a relationship between drawing and technology that is further explored in works by Matthew Kluber, Kristina Martino, Michael Stradley, and Vanessa Enríquez, which engage or evoke media ranging from outmoded tapes to digital screens.  The specter of technology also haunts the works of Amy Kao, Corina Kennedy, and Scott Whipkey, whose colorful fields of dense marks tempt the viewer to ask:  Are these allover compositions achieved through intensive human labor or algorithmic magic?  Equally concentrated accretions by Maess Anand and Sophie LaBell skew scientific, finding beauty in cellular organization.

Drawings by Bella Ferreira, Sophia Le Fraga, Marietta Hoferer, Claudia Sbrissa, and a collaborative work by Hilary Judd and Lucy May Schofield bear similarly dense, yet more emphatically analogue, accumulations. Marks made by library stamps (Le Fraga) or a typewriter (Judd and Schofield) also introduce words into the visual field.  So do works by Pamela Lawton, Terry Rosenberg, and K. Saito, whose respective languages lie between ancient text, scrawled graffiti, and encrypted code, and Sigrid van Woudenberg, whose single-word invitation is at once shouted and shrouded by an ornamental edge.

Ornament also distinguishes works by Maria Ierusalimskaya, Bruce Wall, Madeleine Herisson-Leplae, and Kevin Swenson, which are at once intricate and architectural in their consideration of form.  By embedding his labyrinthine drawing within a plastic food container, Wall explores the role found elements can play in drawing.  Relatedly, Cody Anderson uses a postcard as a jumping off point for a color study, Ken Buhler populates his marbled ground with collaged bits from vintage maps, and Rodney Ewing and Daina Higgins use found papers–a farmer’s ledger and a lined legal sheet, respectively–mining the associations they offer.

For Ruth Chambers, cut-and-pasted newspaper is used to build bathers, introducing the human figure.  Bodies–and especially heads–form the basis of drawings by Rachael Van Dyke, Jeanne Verdoux, Bryan Raymundo, and Julian Pozzi, which harness the smudges and smears inherent to their media to suggest unstable identity or spinning psyches.  The face in Kerry Tallarico’s drawing becomes a tangle of inky squiggles, while Jen Pepper offers, uncannily, a wig without a wearer.  Devoid of faces, Elinor Dei Tos Pironti’s twinned travelers become surreal, while Ji Eun Lim’s protuberant hands veer, unsettlingly, toward illegibility.  

Meanwhile, the illness implied in Rebecca Kautz’s drawing does nothing to quell the exuberant immediacy of her application of pastel.  And a similar visual language–quick strokes, vivid color–adds energetic humor to a colored pencil drawing by Capitana F, in which a suitcase’s human owner is absent but an unexpected rodent is present.  Likewise, there is a tenderness to drawings of common objects by Yvette Cohen, Dallas Sigmon, and Nandini Bagla Chirimar—stemming, I think, from the implicit relationship of a slipper, a sari, or a hammer, to the foot, torso, or hand that might wear or grasp it.  

Constellations of objects come together to suggest staged tableaux in works by Richard Yasko, Christian Wechgelaer, and Grant Barbour.  There’s a Victorian quality to Barbour’s visual language that sets us, for our last few drawings, on a little art historical course:  from there to the suggestive Symbolism of a pastel by Christopher Daharsh, on to the organic Orphist vibe of Claire Whitehurst, and finally to the Deco-Futurism of Jack Wood.  

This admittedly subjective sweep is only my own attempt to trace a line through a deliciously heterogeneous pack of drawings.  Gathered on Kentler’s walls, these works chatter away to one another, making their own connections and community.

-- Juror Samantha Friedman is a curator in the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, NY.

Kentler International Drawing Space is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing contemporary drawings and works on paper by emerging and under-recognized national and international artists to the public, and to providing the opportunity to experiment, explore and expand the definition of art in society. Since its founding by two artists in 1990, Kentler has hosted more than 1,000 exhibitions and maintains a flatfiles archive of more than 3,000 artworks. Free public programs include Exhibitions & Events, The Kentler Flatfiles & K.I.D.S. Art Education.