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Drawings & Notes

25 March 2023
drawing Josef Albers Variant/Adobe, 1947 Oil on blotting paper - work on paper, contemporary drawing, art on paper, drawings

Josef Albers

Variant/Adobe, 1947
Oil on blotting paper
49.5 x 61.6 cm

Josef Albers: Paintings Titled Variants
28 February – 15 April 2023
David Zwirner, London

Josef Albers

Variant/Adobe, 1947
Oil on blotting paper
46 x 61.3 cm

Josef Albers

Study for Graphic Tectonic, c. 1942
Ink on paper
43.2 x 55.9 cm

Josef Albers

Color study for a Variant/Adobe, c. 1970
Oil on blotting paper
29.2 x 45.7 cm

18 September 2021

Tatiana Trouvé

April 10th, The Washington Post, USA
from the series ‘March to May’,
2020
inkjet print and pencil on paper
42.1 x 29.5 cm

Tatiana TrouvéFrom March to May
18 September – 30 October 2021
Gagosian Gallery, New York

Links: [Tatiana Trouvé] [Gagosian Gallery] [Gagosian Quarterly]

Tatiana Trouvé
April 14th, La Tercera, Chile
from the series ‘March to May’,
2020
inkjet print and pencil on paper
42.1 x 29.5 cm

[from the pressrelease]
“When the quarantine was announced, newspapers from countries around the world being ravaged by the pandemic took on new meaning. I began, each day, to draw on the front page of a paper—it was a way of escaping the confinement, and of being connected to the strange atmosphere that was spreading around the globe with the virus. This world tour via headlines and front pages was like a journey in reverse. Suddenly, I could no longer meet the world unless the world came to me, through the newspapers. Governments and leaders around the world should have seen this as an opportunity to reconsider our societal and economic models. But no. This crisis has only heightened my anger at the inequalities we accept daily, and at the contempt we show for our planet.
—Tatiana Trouvé

27 March 2021

Amalia Pica

Joy in Paperwork 342, 2015
ink on paper
29.7 x 21 cm

27 March – 25 April 2021
König Galerie, Nave of St. Agnes, Berlin

Amalia Pica

Joy in Paperwork 338, 2015
ink on paper
29.7 x 21 cm

[from the pressrelease]

The series Joy in Paperwork addresses questions of bureaucracy and arbitrariness. The drawings are made with stamps that the artist picked up from different countries. In times of the digitalization documents are still essential in many official processes. Arranged in different patterns the stamps both play with and subvert our obeisance of bureaucracy. Joy in Paperwork Despite the discussion of the global digital world, bureaucratic procedures continue to be based on hard copies, e.g. one’s passport booklet, driver’s license, or official mail. Utilizing a lexicon of formal compositional possibilities Joy in Paperwork, presents elaborate rubber-stamp drawings.

As the texts of the stamps are repeatedly imprinted, their utility becomes abstracted and gives way to patterns or even recognizable forms – sometimes these drawings look like flowers, or even landscape. Pica has restricted her palette to the three ink colors most commonly used in official paperwork–black, red and blue–and with that. The stamps from different countries in different languages mark something has been paid, received, delivered, or duplicated within the abstraction of the bureaucratic machine. From the repetitive gesture of stamping, archiving and display emerges not only a defiant attitude, but also a resilience and joy that defy the very oppression of bureaucracy itself.

The drawings are meant to overwhelm viewers but also draw them in for close viewing as well. Pica is interested in things that get lost, are overheard, forgotten or miscommunicated. In her work, erasure and compensation happens both at the level of the historical anecdote, and at its mediation through art. Although not only linked to immigration, the work speaks to Pica’s arduous process as a non- European person applying for citizenship in a European country.

Amalia Pica

Joy in Paperwork 335, 2015
ink on paper
29.7 x 21 cm

28 May 2020

Elizabeth Peyton

Eternal Return #2 (Tutankhamun), 2020
Monotype on Twinrocker handmade paper
76.8 × 56.5 cm

Elizabeth Peyton. Eternal Return
web-project Petit Crieu

Elizabeth Peyton

Yuzuru Free Skate, 2019
Watercolor on paper
41 × 31 cm

Elizabeth Peyton

Greta, 2020
Watercolor pastel, and glitter on paper
76.2 × 26 cm

Elizabeth Peyton

Reflection, 2020
Black glitter and colored pastel on paper
50.8 × 35.6 cm

29 January 2020

Michaël Borremans

The Feast, 2019
pencil and white ink on paper
26,7 x 21,2 cm

Michaël Borremans, N. Dash, Marlene Dumas, Kees Goudzwaard, Mark Manders, Hyun-Sook Song, Luc Tuymans, Anne-Mie van Kerckhoven. Work on Paper
29 January – 14 March 2020
Zeno X Gallery, Antwerpen

Mark Manders

Untitled, 2009
pencil on paper
21 x 29,7 cm

N. Dash

Commuter (2), 2019 – 2020
acrylic, paper
52,4 x 37,8 cm

Hyun-Sook Song

Untitled, 2014 – 2018
tempera on paper
22,5 x 27,4 cm

Kees Goudzwaard

Working Materials, 2019
acrylic on cardboard
50 x 40 cm

9 February 2019

David Weiss

Untitled, 1978
watercolor on paper
30 x 21 cm

David Weiss. Drawings
9 February – 6 April 2019
Matthew Marks Gallery, New York

David Weiss

Untitled 6, 1975
Ink on paper
eight sheets 21 × 30 cm

David Weiss

Untitled (from Neocolor) 1978
Oil pastel on paper
19 × 13 cm

Drawings presents a cross-section works on paper by David Weiss (1946-2012), made between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, before he began collaborating with Peter Fischli. In those early years he explored a range of visual idioms with the same playful curiosity that infused his later collaborative work with Fischli. Some of the earliest drawings were made during his extensive travels from his native Switzerland to London, Montreal, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mexico, Morocco, and Italy. 

The over fifty drawings in the exhibition are executed in a variety of media and in a wide range of sizes. As Barry Schwabsky writes in the accompanying catalogue, “These works reflect a commitment neither to a particular type of subject matter, nor to a particular way of drawing, but rather to an exploration of drawing as such.” 

David Weiss

Untitled (Self-Portrait), c. 1984
Ink on paper
30 × 21 cm

14 May 2018

Henri Jacobs

Journal Drawing 926, Thursday 15 March 2018
Piorko / surface research universe, recto (plaited paper, final drawing)
31,5 x 31,7 cm

JaGaTa. Henri Jacobs, Patrick Gabler and Koen Taselaar. Drawings
12 May – 10 June 2018
Gallery Maurits van de Laar, Den Haag

Koen Taselaar

Tunnelvision, Indecision, 2016
ink on paper
43 x 32 cm

Patrick Gabler

Drawing Series III, Nr. 8, 2014
pencil on paper
45 x 33 cm

Koen Taselaar

Compassion Fatigue, 2014
ink on paper
29.5 x 21 cm

Henri Jacobs

Journal Drawing 845 (Clockwork), 11 October 2017
pencil, ink, watercolor on paper
Ø 31 cm

8 March 2018

Cy Twombly

Untitled (Gaeta), 1989
Acrylic and tempera on paper mounted on wood panel
203.2 x 148.9 cm

Cy TwomblyIn Beauty it is finished: Drawings 1951–2008
8 March –25 April 2018
Gagosian Gallery

Cy Twombly
Untitled (In Beauty it is finished)
, 1993 – 2002 (detail)
Acrylic, wax crayon, pencil and pen on handmade paper in unbound handmade book
36 pages, each page 56.8 x 40 cm

[from the pressrelease]
“Throughout his career, Twombly sustained an active engagement with drawing, gesture, and making marks on paper. His urgent, meandering lines embody the intimate energies that carry over into his paintings, sculptures, and photographs. Despite their enigmatic qualities, Twombly’s drawings are strikingly articulate in their rhythm, line, and allusions. At once economical and deeply sensual, they contain a timeless language, mediating between ancient and modern culture.

In the 1950s, when Twombly was a young artist, Abstract Expressionism radically disrupted the conventions of easel painting. Although he was a contemporary of Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, his work eventually departed from the aims of American postwar abstraction. While prevailing movements of the period, such as Pop art and Minimalism, sought to abandon historical narratives altogether, Twombly, who began to spend time in Europe during this period, directed his focus to classical, modern, and ancient poetic traditions.

One of the earliest works included in the exhibition is from a 1951 sketchbook. Several drawings feature cascades of pencil markings, subtle gradations, erasures, and other evidence of Twombly’s intense contact with the paper. In the late 1950s Twombly moved to Italy, and Volume 2, which documents this period, includes colorful, diagrammatic works such as Ode to Psyche (1960), featuring erotic allusions and jokes while maintaining an abstract charge. Through the 1960s, sensuousness and color pervade the drawings, which eventually evolve into more austere gray and blue “blackboard” works.

Works from later volumes present changing preoccupations in Twombly’s practice and thinking, as he plunged further into poetic and mythic sources. As he continued to work in various locations—including his hometown of Lexington, Virginia, and his final residence in Gaeta, Italy—places, landscapes, and natural forms came to figure prominently in drawings, collages, and watercolor series.”

Cy Twombly
Untitled (Gaeta), 1990
Acrylic, wax crayon and pencil on handmade paper
77.8 x 54.8 cm

Cy Twombly
Untitled, 1954
Gouache, wax crayon and colored pencil on paper
48.5 x 64 cm

13 January 2018

John Houck

Bullseyes, 2017
Archival pigment print
53 13/16 x 42 13/16 x 2 inches
Edition of 2 + 1 AP

John HouckHands, See Mouth
13 December 2017 – 23 February 2018
Fused | Jessica Silverman, San Fransisco

24 December 2011

Cyprien Gaillard

Floods of the Old and New World, 2011
Collage
15,2 x 19 cm

Cyprien Gaillard
Floods of the Old and New World, 2011
Collage
15,2 x 19 cm

27 February 2008

Sigmar Polke

Zwei Köpfe, Kartoffelköppe (Mao & LBJ), 1965

A weblog about contemporary drawing, scribbles, notes and an occasional painting or photograph. Click on images to go directly to original pictures, or on the links to learn more about the artist involved. 

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