Selections Fall 2005: LineAge

Selected from The Drawing Center's Viewing Program, the nine featured emerging artists in Selections Fall 2005: LineAge explored the genealogy of the drawn line in terms of formal development, biographical content, or demarcations of identity. Participating in the exhibition were: CarianaCarianne, Susan D'Amato, Franklin Evans, Adam Fowler, Monika Grzymala, Molly Larkey, Judy Stevens, David Tallitsch, and Stefanie Victor.

CarianaCarianne (Chicago, IL) investigated the authority and the legacy of a body and identity that was inherently multiple. For LineAge, a new series of text-based drawings and videos were presented that included agreements modeled on the Oslo Accord of 1993. The artists acted as each other's legal notary as they signed their own "Collaborative Accord," and produced drawings as they attempted to fulfill the agreements addressing the rights accorded to two entities living in one body. Working in large-scale charcoal drawings, Susan D'Amato (Syracuse, NY) rendered navels in a hyperrealist mode. D'Amato's otherworldly drawings alluded to the absent umbilical cord or lifeline as well as lunar landscapes. Franklin Evans (New York, NY) traced the genealogical trees of his own drawings. Each of the artist's drawings generated "relatives" by expanding on details which then became autonomous artworks. For LineAge, Evans composed a large-scale "family tree" of his drawings directly on the wall. In his graphite drawings, Adam Fowler (Washington, DC) intricately layered swirling lines, each of which was isolated from its background by precise cutting techniques. The absence of a vanishing point in the overall composition created a tension with the physical depth of the lace-like layered sheets. Using miles of tape, Monika Grzymala (Hamburg, Germany) registered directions, relationships, and paths of movement in public spaces. Grzymala combined this with her own movements and flow of ideas to create drawings that extended throughout the space. For LineAge, the artist created an environmental drawing structure that viewers could walk through and around.

The drawings of Molly Larkey (Brooklyn, NY) were based on notes she received as a young child from her father, who lived far away. Nearly three decades later, she answered the notes and elaborated the line of communication over time in her own handwriting. The papers were enlarged to five times their original size to monumentalize the details of the dialogue into solid markers of emotion between father and daughter. Judy Stevens (New York, NY) crocheted lines of yarn into colorful and unexpected tableaux. Stevens' flat organic shapes undermined the usual linear path of creations in yarn. By producing growths and appendages, her drawings with yarn exploited the meandering possibilities of the medium. David Tallitsch (Oakland, CA) portrayed fictitious artists by creating a possible line of thought for the creation of their (unrealized) works. Tallitsch presented a desk laden with the gadgets used by the hypothetical artist, including reference images from art history, as well as a profusion of preparatory sketches that foretold her or his artistic progeny. Stefanie Victor (Brooklyn, NY) rendered the weave of textiles with graphite in a painfully exacting manner. The mechanical production of fabric was reenacted by hand to reproduce and represent the original in a new medium. The pencil line both deconstructed the original work and generated it again without any loss of information.

Accompanying Selections Fall 2005: LineAge was an edition of The Drawing Center's publication series, the Drawing Papers. Drawing Papers 55 contained 12 images, and statements by each exhibiting artist or an essay by a writer of their choice.