The Drawing Center's
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The Drawing Center
Gnnov GEnnnacnr The glance is at once site rnd sight. Prur Vrnrrto, Lost I)inrnsion
In his ongoing public transit performance entitled Comrnutes(LIJ Tiunsit Series),Grady Gerbracht inhabits a virtual landscape.The project is completed in three specific stagesand draws on the body ofobservations that arise from the artist's daily expedition to and from his teaching job in Pararnus.The perforrnance begins as the bus draws to a halt at a given stop. Working within the momentary freeze-frameof the bus window, Gerbracht attempts to trace the visual markers that draw his attention. These markers instigate a pausein the perperually moving irnage continuum, and they therefore seem to order his journey. Unlike traditional rnonurnents (city gates,commemorative statues),these en route markers assertthemselves by chance and are uniformly unrernarkable(a conveniencestore, a suburban home). It is significant that the sighting and rendering of the rnarkers takes place only in the momentary pausein the endlessflow of visual inforrnation-in this instant, Gerbracht attempts an intervention as irnage consumption becomesit-nage production. The parar-netersprovided by the rnoven-rentofthe bus are respectedthroughout the first part of the perforrnance,and a given drawing is finished once the bus resumesmovement. The sketch-like style of the completed drawings suggestsan attempt to represent the artist's personal experienceofthe landscape,but the drawings do not cohere as aestheticobjects in the traditional sense.In fact, Gerbracht consistently draws attention to the conditional integrity of the art object. The necessary nlovernent of the bus occasionsa seriesof rapid shifts in passengerperspective,allowing only a brief coherence of landscapernarker and inscription within the frame of the window. C)ncesurface inscription lails to coincide with observablelandscape,the set of coordinates significant to the reception of the drawing as drawing lift. The bus window is therefore lessa surfacesupporting graphic inscription than a kind of shared lirnit berween pure irnage and irnapJe-world.The second moment in the perforrnance colnnlenceswhen the artist cornpletes his journey and leavesthe bus. Abandoning the window drawing, he ceasesto function as the guarantor oF aestheticvalidity and launcheshis gesture into the world. This second Inoment of the perforrnance develops the public dimension that is central to Gerbracht's project, and at this point, public reception becomesreliant on a chance encounter. The non-referential marks on the window surfacernight cohere, for a given passenger, into a recognizable landrnark-a found aestheticobject. Lacking the landscapeimag;ethat servedas a template for the tracing, this viewer would be granted a nlere fragrnent of the larger event. But a nlore optimistic vision would place a new passengerin the artist's fonner seat,and set this passengeron the same bus route. The chancesof this rneeting of passenger,landscapeirnage, and window drawing are scant, introducinp; a paradoxicalutopianism to this segment of Cornrnutes. In a third and final stage,a photographic record of the window drawing performance is installed in the gallery space.The presentation consistsofa seriesofslides projected in three-secondintervals that re-enact the measuredmovement of the bus. Within the virrual frame of the irnage,the landscape,window inscription, and (often) the artist again coincide. The carefully ordered irnagesare drawn from a rnuch larger body of work, and the presentation does not recreate a specific journey or lived tirne. Instead Gerbracht searchesfor the archetypal and enduring and attempts to delineate a kind of rnythology by drawing together the memory-in'ragesspecific to the virrual world. One might recall at this juncture the potential for a meeting between subject, image, and landscape that, if hopelesslyutopian, representsa major force in the functioning of this work. The near irnpossibility of a utopian moment is acknowledgedhere-the existenceof this project is in the end provisional, in other words, reliant on the aestheticdiscoursespecific to the exhibition space.The real potential for such a utopian moment continues to be enacted on New Iersev Ti'ansit bus 163. DreNe Bus s
Diana Bush is ln rrt historian and critic livine in New York
Born and lives in New York.
I.\cerpts frrrn the series of tlocunrentlry photolJrrphs fr<rn the prt>jecr Conmutts (itj
Tfunsit Scrits), 1999-prcsent
I)imensions v:rriable.
Conntutes (NJ Ti'nnsit Serias),r999-present l)ocunrentrn photoqraphs of r Public-tnnsit Perfonnrrncein which selectetlexterior scenesvisible front l lrus werc trlcetl on its u indou s, rlirrrensionsvrrirble.
Gr.nNN Gnernr.uaN Upon returning to New York from three years abroad,I found myself living in a high-rise building surroundedby thirty+ix floors of windows.Fascinatedby the nuancesthat playedacrossthe windows,I began to videotapethe emissionof light and shadowafter rwilight. During this processI enjoyedthe reverseimage effect created by the camera'snegative function, which made the windows resembleDNA test strips, and the voyeuristic nature of the activity. My next step was to make drawings of my nocturnal observations.The resultant drawings seemnocturnal regardlessof their positive or negativephotographic orientation. What of urban inhabitantsin their beganasrecordingsof the sociologicaland behavioralcharacteristics environments becamepoetic renderings of stnrctural forms and human genomemaps.
fivelve Untitleddrawingsfrom the series"Window Drawings," r998-zooo Charcoal and color fixatives on paper, r8 x z4 in. (45.7 x 6r cm) each
Born in Minneapolis; lives in New York.
Gnner.orNn Lau A canographicstructurespreadsacrossthe wall. A juxtapositionof a variety of tapesdisclosesislandsof color situatedamidstgossamertrade routes.Spanningthe spaceof a white wall, an etherealglowing map slowly revealsa myriad of incidental and manipulated imperfections within the apparentauthority of mapped information. Cartographic details that allude to a formal environment and intimate a physical mrth. Tirrn-of-the-century maps have alwaysheld a deep fascination for me. They speakto a historical truth, a time pastthat is no longer reflectedin the landscapeof today.Often a landscapeis muted by progressand editedby our refined ability to delineateplace.I am compelledby the shift betweenthe intimated and the real.A puzzle that invigorates concerted study and engagesthe imagination. These investigationsare dedicatedto a personalpastmarkedby the traumaticlossof my ancestralhome and the erasureand total restnrcturing of is physical surrounding environment.
Information Retrieual42, zooo Oil and tape on wall, dimensions variable
Born in Singapore;livesin New York.
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Menv Luu Each of Mary Lum's cutout gouache drawings is based on one or more photographs that she has taken of spacesin the ciry. Sometimes she takes picrures of clusters of buildings at street level; sometimes from several floors up in buildings like those she records. The photographs serve as mnemonic devices, providing her with a visual record ofthe generic positive and negative urban spacesthat she finds ofinterest, and making it relatively easyfor her to simplif,' their geometric volumes into the precisionist outlines that she transposes into pencil, and then gouache on paper. Lum cuts out these delicate distillations of the built environment and superimposes as many as three of them to form any given work. This layering of the individual view more or less greatly complicates the capacity of any single perspectival account to claim priority over any other for more than a passinginstant in the mind of the beholder. Lum's constructions suggestan unlikely artistic variation on the Siruadonist theme of "psychogeography,"in which Guy Debord and other Situationists who engaged in the radically anti-instrumentalist form of urban wandering that they dubbed the ddriaeattended equally to the characteristicsofurban spaceand to the inner life of the mind. Indeed, Lum has called the resulting body of works "Slip," a word that can refer both to Freud's "parapraxes"(slips of the tongue, failures of memory etc.), which Lum has explored in such artist's books as Exerpt from the Final Resuhsof PrychoanalyticTi'eatment(r 99o) and The Final Resnhsof Psychoanalytic Tieatm.ent(t99t), as well as to the urban dweller's multiply divided consciousness.In this sense,Lum's superimpositions of one "place" on top of another function most forcefully as metaphor. For while it may be the casethat one's encounters with specific placesin the city have the effect of conjuring other places,far more often they releasea rush of more miscellaneousmemories: of what happened there before, of who lived there, of when and in the company of whom one first noticed a place, and of the many lossesthat the persistenceof the built environment (itself no sure thing) and the passageof time both honor and mock. In short, these appropriately modest and ephemeral works of art deploy the uniquely imaginary qualities of pictorial spaceto suggestthe inseparability ofurban spaceand psychic experience. Da vrp Drrr c ut n
David Deitcher is an art historian irnd critic who teachesat Cooper Union in New York.
All drawings are gourche on cut pirp!r, I999
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Born in St. Cloud. Minnesota: lives in Hornell. New York.
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My personal interest in "knowing" is not coolly philosophical; it grows out of ?rnanxious alienation fron-r oFCartesian traditional, "universal" ways of thinking. I have never felt cornfortablewith the den-rands objectivity and intellectual distance. Instead, I bring Freudian femininity-and a post-Freudian felninisnrro my work, which is incompatible with the view of truth and knowledge as monurnental and independent of passing subjectivities. I am absorbed by the ambivalence knorving sparks as an object of desire-hinting ar, yer never conferring, the ideal state we long for. (That state being, I !;uess,one in which our lack is cured: we know everything, and have thereby won the recognition, adrniration, and love of everyone-Morn and Dad included.) Central to rny work is the desire to know, and the conflicted statesit causesin rnyself and others. My projects and seriesdraw on the workings of intellectual investigation. I accumulateand organize objects, texts, itnages, and diagrams like specirnensor lab sarnples.Afterward, I employ systematicprocessesand a pseudo-scientific forrnality to shape them. Series,repetition, and variations on a framework echo the scientific deployment of multiple data sourcesto build univocal authoriry. Yet my results are corrupted: painstaking methodologSyis taken too far-instead of analytical thoroughness,it revealsan obsessionand excess.My choice of components, procedures,and subjectsbetrays a deep sublin-ratedanger. And consistently my estranglernent the from the universal point ofview produces somethin!iadditional and uncontrolled, which sabotagles analytical enterprise. It is this by-product of a sabotagedmethod (usually labeled a lapse,mistake, or failure in traditional reasoning) that I use to fashion my version of a personal epistemology-one that can include the anxiety, bewildennent, and even the pleasureof living in the body, engulfed in the world. Each drawing in the "Book Portraits" seriesis comprised of a stack of translucent paper.The paper bears tracings of the drawn elements of all the diagrarnsand charts in a single book. I set certain paralnetersbefore beginning: only the drawn illustrations are traced (omitting photographs and explanatory texts). The irnages are rendered in the same order as they appear in the book and in the same spot on the tissuesthat they hold on the book's pages.I fill each sheet of tissue before moving on to the next. All the sheetsare the same sizean averageof the dimensions of the books. Each set of tissuesis exhibited only in its stacketlform and in the same order it was drawn.
Works from the series"Book Portraits: Drawings of Their Drawings," rg98-gg ()raphitc <rnstacksof(lhinesc silk tissue, 8 r/: x 5 r/z in. (2r.6 x rj.9 cm)
The Eloquent Baton Inelostic Behauior in Shells Elementsof Structmnl htgineering A Model of the Mind Hunrcn Perception Circhs PsychologicnlAspectsof SpaccFlight Cerebml Hernisphere'-itt Bmin Tumors A Duip for Snfe Driaing Tbe Dynarnics of Anxiet:y dt Hysteria F undmncntnls oJ'La nd St n'e.yit tg Modertt Covnuicolog fuIogtctisar and Elctricity Ontics
Born in Ft. Levenworth, Kans.ts;lives in New York.
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Julrn MsHnrru I use an imagined complex languageof qymbolsand marls that behave,batde, migrate, and socializeto create deailed maps and architectonic plans of an artificial, abstractcosmology.I am interested in the multifaceted layersof place, space,and time that impact the formation of personal and communal identity. By playing with the languageof symbolic geographyand architecture as tools for representingpersonal naratives, my d*"rirgs question the multiplicity of history and its qzstems.
Fifteen Untitled drawings, zooo Int colored pencil, and cut paper on Mylar, r8 x 24in (45.7 x 6r cm).
Born in Addis Abeba, Ethiopia; lives in Brooklyn.
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L uces M o N a co The central therne in rny work is utiliry. I pursue lines of thought and demonstrate ideas culled frorn influences such as architecture and computer programmingJ.I bring these elernentstogether and present a statement that asksquestions and provides possibilities.My most recent drawings are chronicles of selectedinvestigationsinto urban planning;and development, architecture, and various socio-economic and community trends. Mapping allows me to describe a number of diverse factors simultaneouslyand permits me to reach a conclusion about a siruation and to provide an adequateportrait of it as well. The map motif gathers factors that fonn an environment and createsa platform for the dual purpose of picture-making and outlining my concerns about the public landscape. The simplified plan facilitates a sirnulation of objectiviry. Its mixrure of patterns and unique visual events constmcrs a plane comprised of random as well as rational developments.With it I can look at a group of events (or groups ofgroups ofevents) on a level landscapeand create a non-linear narrative ofthe "place" specified in the drawing. This abstraction gives me an artificial form of real or physical seeing and helps to presenr my perspectiveon a seemingly stable and still place. Tirne becomesa subject of the pictures, prompting such questions as what happened first and second,what was the result of what, what else miplht have happened, and why has it developed in this manner. I see each piece as part of a larger group that constitutes not only my aestheticinterests but also a more general approach to rnaking and experiencing art. I feel there are important issuesat stake in the relationship of artist and viewer. I see this relationship mostly as that of producer and user; the artist is only successfulto the extent rhar a user is able to use the piece. Given this utilitarian view of the art experience,I believe one must constandy be in a pool ofexperimentation and developrnent.Each piece should be regarded as an improvement on the last and the concept of progresswithin a given pursuit should be a driving force. This does not imply a goal of perfection (and therefore stasis),but suggestsa spiral that parallelsthe course of life outside the art-making process.Son'rethingas abstract as the making of art might even be affected by the logic we apply everyday to our comrnon individual and social existence.
All works rre tilnr mounted on rcnlic
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Born in New York; lives in Long Island City.
Untitlcd (Mibni), uooo. Film mounted on acrylic, z3 x z3 in. (58.4 x 58.4 cm).
O o Ne S r En N I make references to architecrure through the choice ofmaterials, the building process, and the deplol'rnent of iconography. Generally using construction materials, I build sculptures and installations that explore relationships between two-dimensional imagery and three-dimensional strucrure. I rely on graphic conventions to represent material: for instance wary lines for wood, boxes for brick. tanslating this drawing language into three-dimensional forms, I build things as if they were drawn. Inversely, I draw into, onto, and with building materials, claiming all surfacesas drawing substrate. Through drawing I reduce the visual elements until they are at their most iconographic and didactic. Stripes that converge at a horizon line read as floor boards. Stackedrectanglesbecome bricks. I borrow this aspectof my practice from the history of materials in our environment. Architecture and construction materials rely on our recognition of a visual language.For example,synthetic and substitute materials, like vinyl siding or PVC flooring, depend upon our recognition that certain wavy parallel lines represent wood grain. With my sculpture, the image of a work is rooted in a two-dimensional graphic, as well as in its identity as material. For example, I have cut a wood grain graphic into gray plywood flooring. The graphic is no more than a set ofwavy parallel lines, and these lines are recognized as a sign ofwood, no matter how crudely rendered. The interface between sculprure and drawing lies in the lines cut into the wood with a router. "Wood" is signified not only by its graphic configuration, but also in its very dimensionality. The cut of the rout reveals the material identiry of the flooring, moving it from surface to "sruff." One walks onto the work and the initial two-dimensional image warps away as one's spatial and temporal sensesbegin to operate. The imagery that I develop is not a representationvia illusion. It is a reference or an associationthat draws on the mind's reserve of information and on associative habits practiced unconsciously. I transpose a visual language from one material to another, or from a drawn state to a built state. But I always mean for the original state to be recognized on its own terms. Wood is wood. Drawings are drawings. Drawings are not wood. There is no intention of trompe l'oeil illusionism. There is reference,which leavesboth referent and referee intact and exposed. For the floor piecesthe "language" of the floor is not something very important in and of itself. It has no empirical value. Yet I make a big deal of it: naming it and attributing to it a relevance.
rem.ark, zooo Latex paint and pigment, dimensions variable
Born and lives in New York.
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The Drawing Center is the only not-for-profit institution in the country to focus solely on the exhibition of drawings, both contemporary and historic. It was establishedin r 976 to provide opportunities for emerging and under-recognized arrists; to demonstrate the significance of drawings throughout history; and to stimulate public dialogue on issuesof art and culture. This is number r r of the Dtawing Papers,a seriesof publications documenting The Drawing Center's exhibitions and public programs and providing a forum for the study of drawing. The Druwing Papers publication seriesis printed on Monadnock Dulcet roo# Smooth Text and 8o# Dulcet Smooth Cover. Major support for the development and presentation of the Drawing Paperchas been generously contributed by Frances Dittmer. The Drawing Center is grateful for the support it receivesfor its exhibition programs and operations from the following sources: Benefactors Adler Family Foundation, Booth Ferris Foundation, The Charles Engelhard Foundation, Fifth Floor Foundation, The Getty tust, The Howard Gilman Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc., Abby and Mitch Leigh Foundation, Estate of Paula Mal Lempert, The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., New Line Cinema/Fine Line Features,Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc., Stimuleringsfondsvoor fuchitectuur, Eugene V and Clare E. Thaw Charitable Ti-ust. Andv Warhol Foundation for the Msual Arts. Major Sponsors Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, The Consulate General of the Netherlands in New York, The Greenwich Collection Ltd., Edward John Noble Foundation, Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund, New York Community Ti'ust. Sponsors agnEsb., AXA Nordstern Art Insurance Corp., Chase Manhattan Bank Foundation, Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany, Cowles Charitable tust, eArtGroup.com, Katherine Farley and Jerry I. Speyer,The Graham Foundation, The Greenwall Foundation, Thomas Isenberg, Helen & Martin Kin.rmel, Sally & Howard Lepow, Matthew Marks, The Penny McCall Foundation, J.P. Morgan Charitable Ti-ust, Philip Morris Companies Inc., The Netherland-America Foundation, Melvin R. Seiden, Sotheby's. Friends Patricia & A-lanB. Abramson, Ann & Steven Ames, Harriett Ames Charitable Tiust, Naorni & Stephen Antonakos, Anne H. Bass,Melva Bucksbaun'r,The Buhl Foundation, Constance R. Caplan, Christie's, Charles Cowles, Jan Cowles, The Chubb Corporation, Rebecca& Loic de Kertanguy, Rebecca& Martin Eisenberg, Susan& Arthur Fleischer,Jr., Foundation for Contemporary Perfonnance Atts, Inc., Lorna & Lawrence Graev, The William and Mary Greve Foundation, Inc., Janine & J. Tomlinson Hill, Horne Box Office (HBO), Mr. & Mrs. James R. Houghton, Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies, Allison Lasley, Wendy Mackenzie & Alexander Cortesi, Lorne Michaels, The Felix & Elizabeth Roharyn Foundation, Lisa & David T. Schiff' Lily & Axel Stawski. With significant support from National Endowment for the Arts, New York Ciry Department of Cultural Affairs, New York State Council on the Arts, and The Drawing Center's National Council and Members.
Board of Directors
Dia Amory GeorgeNegroponte Co-Chairmen
FrancesBeatty Adler JamesM. Clark,Jr. FrancesDittrner Colin Eisler Bruce W. Ferguson Michael Iovenko Werner H. Kramarsky AbbyLeigh William S. Lieberman Michael Lynne Elizabeth Rohatyn* Eric C. Rudin Dr. Allen Lee Sessoms JeanneC. Thayer* Edward H. Tuck Elizabeth Weir Andrea Woodner Catherine deTxgher Executive Director *Emerita
Viewing Program Committee Catherine de 7-,egher,Direc,tor Luis Camnitzer, MewingProgramCurator Elizabeth Finch, curator Arturo Herrera, MewingProgramCuraor Vctoria Noorthoorn, ViewingProgramandExhibitionsCoordinator Allison Plastridge, RegistrarandCuratorielAssistant
The Drawing Center 35 Wooster Street NewYor\ NY roor3 Teh zrz-z19-2166 Faxrzrz-966-2976
l)esiq'ner:l,trc I)crvckc (l<xrltlin:rtor:K:rtic l)ycr O 2(XX)'l'he l)rru ing (lcntcr'