Adrianne Gallinari: Wall Drawings

For her first U.S. exhibition, The Drawing Center invited Brazilian artist Adrianne Gallinari to create a new work directly on the walls of the Drawing Room. Born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in 1965, Gallinari created a kind of visual poetry through drawings that combined figures and writing so as to defy easy legibility.

Gallinari worked with black crayon directly on the wall, with the installation comprised of an expressive mass of words intermixed with human figures, most often suggested through simple contour and outline. Taken together, Gallinari's drawings affected a rhythm: some sections were cacophonous while others were silent, with the fragile figures floating over the whiteness of the wall. These figures often included details such as the heart or lungs, and were situated in relationship to drawn references to the space.

To accompany the exhibition, The Drawing Center published the fifteenth edition of the Drawing Papers, containing an essay by Victoria Noorthoorn, Viewing Program Coordinator, and illustrations of drawings produced especially by the artist for the publication.