Milan Grygar: Performance Drawings

Performance Drawings was a series of five short solo exhibitions, taking place in The Drawing Center's exhibition space at 40 Wooster Street. The series presented the work of artists engaged in exploring the intersection between drawing and performance. Several of the performances encouraged audience interaction and the series as a whole offered a unique opportunity to encounter process-oriented and multi-disciplinary works.

An artist from Prague, Milan Grygar inaugurated the series with his performance Tactile Drawing, which was part of an ongoing series which he started in 1969. Grygar created a drawing while blindfolded, suspending a large sheet of paper and striking two arm-sized holes through the surface. Sitting behind the sheet in a position that could be likened to that taken by a cellist, Grygar reached his arms through the holes and played the paper like an instrument, striking and tapping it with ink-covered hands that left rhythmic circles and gestural marks. Grygar's exhibition also featured a selection of the artist's Acoustic Drawings from 1965–1970, in which he employed a diverse array of props, including metal boxes, bells, mechanical toys, and spinning tops, in order to further explore the various acoustic and visual aspects of the "rhythms of the attacks" generated by his handling of these objects, which were immersed in ink and utilized for his performance drawings.

To accompany Performance Drawings, The Drawing Center published Drawing Papers 21, which included an introduction by The Drawing Center Director, Catherine de Zegher, alongside essays by Elizabeth Finch and Tom McDonough. Also included were texts and projects by the artists, and a selection of black-and-white illustrations of the artists' works.