Selections Fall 1998

Selections Fall 1998 presented new work by eight emerging artists who used drawing in experimental ways, highlighting diverse approaches to material, process, and narrative. The Selections exhibition series, while typically non-thematic, provided the artists with an opportunity to present a significant body of work, and demonstrated the diversity of content, materials, and formal concerns found in contemporary drawing.

In Haluk Akakçe's series The Lovers, finely drawn figures floated across the page, embracing and interacting. Between and around these figures intertwined fields of dates created with a common date stamp, linking dream-life and desire to the elusive anchors of time and space. The drawings of Yané Calovski were large in scale but contained multiple small scenes which seemed to mix different moments of time and experience. Gert Verhoeven's drawings contained a vocabulary of forms which suggested charged double-entendres. Jonathan Callan created drawings through the interaction of materials, applying malleable and viscous silicone to maps and pages of text. Greg Chann composed drawings by pouring powdered graphite suspended in denatured alcohol onto sheets of Mylar. Amanda Guest drew during the paper-making process, laying down a continuous line of paper cut from used manila envelopes onto the paper surface while it's still wet. Maureen McQuillan works with printer ink drawn out in resin. This unusual technique results in a surface which is composed of fluid waves of lines. Jennifer Monick creates many of her drawings using the simple, insistent weight of her hand. Left behind are traces of the artist's palm, dirt smudges, small rips and tears.

Selections Fall 1998 was one in a continuing series of Selections exhibitions that brought the work of emerging artists from across the nation and abroad to public attention. All of the featured artists had participated in The Drawing Center's Viewing Program, a service which offered emerging artists an opportunity to present drawing to the curatorial staff for professional feedback and to be considered for inclusion in an exhibition.