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Drawings & Notes

25 January 2023
drawing Carroll Dunham Wrestler Profile (5), 2014 water soluble crayon and pencil on paper - contemporary drawing, work on paper, drawings, art on paper

Carroll Dunham

Wrestler Profile (5), 2014
water soluble crayon and pencil on paper
76.5 x 56.5 cm

Carroll Durham. Selected Drawings
25 January – 25 February 2023
Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin

Carroll Dunham
Green Female, 2021
watercolour, water soluble crayon, watercolour pencil and pencil on paper
51 x 40 cm

Carroll Dunham
White Male Head Over Water, 2017
watercolour, water soluble crayon and pencil on paper
19.2 x 14.5 cm

[from the pressrelease]
To Carroll Dunham the act of drawing is both a routine and a cornerstone for all other media in his multidisciplinary approach. The focus of the show on works in this medium is therefore intimate and highly informative of his practice at large.

One of the leading artists of his generation, Dunham is celebrated for his independent and highly distinctive oeuvre. Across several decades, his work has evolved from anthropomorphic abstraction in the 1970s to a surreal universe inhabited by archetypal human figures. Dunham’s careful choreography provides insight into his subjects’ complex internal world. Riding the line between abstraction and figuration, planes of strong colour and the artist’s distinctive curvilinear line activate the energetically charged works.

The human body has been an ongoing primary subject in Dunham’s oeuvre. Including works from several prominent series of the past decade, a selection from Dunham’s celebrated ‘Wrestler’ series presents a male figure rendered in profile, contemplating his own reflection over a body of water, or wrestling with other male nudes in the landscape.

A mode for inventiveness and experimentation, drawing enables Dunham a raw and immediate pathway for his distinctive pictorial lexicon, without hierarchy towards painting. ‘There is no work of Carroll Dunham that doesn’t use drawing as a foundation. I wouldn’t even know what it would mean to make painting without drawing… I have always drawn a lot, I have always used drawing as a laboratory to think about other things.’

Carroll Dunham
White Male With Dog V, 2018
casein and graphite on paper
79 x 57 cm

13 May 2021

Susan Te Kahurangi King

Untitled, ca. 1967–70
Crayon, ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper
10.25 x 8.25 inches.

Parallel Phenomena: Works on Paper by Carroll Dunham, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Gladys Nilsson and Peter Saul. [Curated by Damon Brandt]
Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York
May 13 – July 2, 2021

Peter Saul

Untitled, 1962
Crayon on paper
35 x 39 inches

Carroll Dunham

Land, 1998
Graphite on paper
15 x 21.5 inches

Gladys Nilsson

Blue Glass, 1985
Watercolor on paper
21.75 x 41.75 inches

Parallel Phenomena [from the pressrelease] – Parallel Phenomena compares and contrasts the distinct yet related worlds these four artists have constructed and woven into being with graphite, colored pencil and watercolor. Every paper surface becomes the territory for a series of eccentrically fueled and compulsively composed narratives, each distinguished by a level of figurative distortion that bears the unmistakable signature of its author. By exploring the compositional and conceptual connective tissue among the works of Carroll Dunham, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Gladys Nilsson and Peter Saul, one can trace the mysterious phenomena of unorchestrated communal responses to deeply held individual impulses or needs. Through this clarifying process one can simultaneously highlight individual inspiration and celebrate the shared instincts and aesthetic parallels.

Susan Te Kahurangi King
Untitled, circa 1967
Crayon, ink, colored pencil and graphite on paper
10 1/4 x 8 inches

23 November 2019

Michael Williams

Untitled Puzzle Drawing, 2019

pen and collage on paper
30.5 x 22.6 cm

Carroll Dunham | Michael Williams. Drawings

curated by Cornelius Tittel
23 November 2019 – 11 January 2020
Gallery Max Hetzler, Berlin

Carroll Dunham

Untitled (12/21/91), 1991

pencil and ink on paper
11.4 x 16.5 cm

Michael Williams

Untitled Puzzle Drawing, 2019

pen and collage on paper
30.5 x 22.6 cm

Carroll Dunham

Untitled (5/25/17), 2017

watercolour crayon and pencil on paper

38.1 x 28.5 cm

[from the pressrelease]
30 years apart and both hailed as leading painters of their generations, Carroll Dunham and Michael Williams have been visiting each other’s studios and collecting each other’s drawings for years. Born out of their friendship and an ongoing dialogue in drawing — a medium at the core of both artists’ practices — Carroll Dunham | Michael Williams: Drawings is the first exhibition to present their work together. Curated by Cornelius Tittel, in close collaboration with the artists, the show brings together more than 50 drawings from the late eighties until today. Dunham has chosen examples from both an early phase he now calls “abstraction with a hard-on”, and more recent figurative drawings of “Bathers” and “Wrestlers”, while Williams has juxtaposed these with his technically complex “Puzzle” drawings, as well as a large group of absurdly comical, figurative drawings he often turns into large format inkjet paintings. By highlighting their shared inspirations — from Psychedelia to Underground comics in the style of Robert Crumb — and showing both artists’ development and stylistic diversity, the exhibition reveals, for the first time, the unique laboratory of ideas behind the subjects and techniques of two of America’s most challenging contemporary painters.

Michael Williams

Traditional Cornish Cottages, 2017

pen, coloured pencil and collage on paper

24.5 x 19.5 cm

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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