I’ll bet your relationship to art began with a crayon.
Remember the smell? The scratchy sound of the yellow and green cardboard flap folding back in a pixelated-spectrum-reveal? Which do you choose first? The joy of that short-lived, sharp-crayon-newness; the fuzziness of a line on Manila paper; that tiny unstick as you pull away and the page releases you from your waxy connection?
Mark-making is a primal pleasure.
Whether a hand imprinted on a rock face; spidery sepia sketching; doodles in the margin of a lined school notebook; deceptively effortless sweeps of Sumi ink; the mapping of a place that may or may not physically exist; or the manifestation of an obsessive’s horror vacui, each says, “I need you to know that I was here.” “I need to remember this.” “I need to work this out.” “I do this to understand my universe.” “I do this to move beyond myself.”
Drawings illuminate the intimate corners of the maker’s mind.
Art people talk about “the hand” in a drawing — the visual evidence of a particular person’s touch — fingerprint specific. The artifacts of other lives – both psychological and physical — in this exhibition may be outside your experience or beyond your ability. Still, you identify with their honest humanity.
This installation – eighty-one artists, taken together — marks an effort to understand what “drawing” means, its emotional gravity. Cultures, continents and centuries apart… themes emerge, persist and become something more. Poetry? Truths?
– Todd Hosfelt, July 2019
the wall text i wrote for between them: an installation composed of drawings up through the 17th of august 2019.
featured image: Anonymous Chinese Artist Bugs, mid 1800s ink and watercolor on paper 12 1/2 x 11 1/2 inches
top image on this page: Alessandro Casolani (Siena, 1552-1606) Study of a Male and Female Figure, Study of a Face pen and ink (recto); black chalk, pen, brown ink and black ink (verso) 8 x 10 1/2 inches
Marco Maggi Flat Pencil, 2019 graphite on graphite 24 x 18 inches
