This group exhibition focuses on a growing trend within drawing: the meticulous translation of images from photographs and photo-based media. Concentrating on instances of social and political transformation from the last two centuries, the thirteen artists in Drawn from Photography turn to source material that ranges from snapshots taken by the artists to photos from news media. The exhibition features Emily Prince’s drawn archive of every fallen American serviceman and woman in Iraq; D-L Alvarez, Andrea Bowers, Sam Durant, and Frank Selby’s renderings of iconic photos of political uprisings and counter-cultural movements; Fernando Bryce’s redrawn historical archives; and Ewan Gibbs and Richard Forster’s drawings after snapshots of the changing industrial landscape. Together, the artists in Drawn from Photography present a novel approach to the drawn medium. In their hands, drawing as rote translation signals a desire for agency coupled with a sense of the distance between “reality out there” and our attempts to comprehend or transform it.
Image: Frank Selby, Light Blue Riot, 2010. Watercolor on Mylar, 28 x 34 inches. Image courtesy of the artist and Museum 52.
Curated by Claire Gilman, Curator