Sam Messenger - Early Drawings by DavidsonGallery

Sam Messenger

EARLY DRAWINGS

Sam Messenger EARLY DRAWINGS

6 February â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 15 March 2014

724 Fifth Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10019 T (212) 759 7555 | F (212) 759 5824 www.davidsoncontemporary.com info@davidsongallery.com

Foreword Sam Messenger’s work starts with process, though Messenger himself has always strived for more than simply a document of procedure. To Messenger, the process is a starting point with little importance to the artist by the end of the finished work. Though his art is almost universally on paper, Messenger uses pen, pencil, ink wash, collage, paste, tissue, newspaper, paint, gesso, and all manner of inclement weather to help achieve the elements of chance that make his works so identifiable, but also questions their definition as ‘drawings’. The Veil works that have garnered so much attention in recent years are the manifestation of over a decade of unrelenting effort and unparalleled focus. That focus is not just on the work that is under his pen at that moment, but on his oeuvre as a whole, and on testing the limits of his own mind and body, as well as of his media. Like much of Messenger’s work, the drawings in his first solo exhibition, titled Straightedge, were rules-based, but impossibly so; expecting unrealistic accuracy and precision from the human hand. 50 schoolhouse rulers drawn to the millimeter without using a straight-edge, free-hand graph paper to the sixteenth of an inch, circles drawn with only straight lines, and a series of untitled works, surreptitiously referred to as Spiderland drawings. The Spiderlands were white ink on a black, textured background (and occasionally black ink on white, grey, or colored backgrounds) over white paper in a pattern resembling a textile or net. Despite their abstract leaning, they were also rules-based – seated in mathematics more than any of the other more regimented works from the show. Calling on his own basic interest in math, as well as on some of the artists he admires – Sol LeWitt and Agnes Martin, for example – Messenger used a Fibonacci sequence incorporating the Golden Ratio. Starting at one point towards the center of the page, Messenger would draw four right triangles in the same orientation within the area of a square. Next to that, another four, to create a rectangle. Above that, another eight to create another square, and so on. In a vacuum,

Untitled 2003 Pen & ink on folded paper mounted on foamcore. 46 x 46 x 0·6 cm (18” x 18” x ¼”) Private collection.

these shapes would be perfect – each square would be exactly twice the size of the previous rectangle, which was made up of two squares. A spiral can be drawn through the design in a nautilus shape. It is a sequence seen in plant life, architecture and, some people argue, the human face. It is a representation of perfection and coincidence, mathematics and aesthetics.

The system or process that begat the Veil series was started by Messenger in his post-graduate school days at the Royal College of Art. The drawings were certainly fully fleshed out works, each in its own right, but they were also exercises. Messenger would draw each grid, by hand, line by line. It was only with the greater picture in his mind of a systemic chaos that Messenger was able to complete what are maddeningly labyrinthine harmonies of mathematical

The Spiderland drawings – a nickname that Messenger himself is uncomfortable with – translated not quite seamlessly into a work titled Gethsemane’s Veil. Intended as an experiment to test his

representation and abstract expressionism.

physical and mental capabilities after sustaining an injury, Gethsemane’s Veil used the same Golden Ratio pattern in white ink on a black background. However, the black background was a poured ink wash, full bleed on a five-foot square piece of Fabriano paper. The effect was stunning. Greys and black wrestled for attention, drawing the viewer’s eye into a depth of field like the night sky, an infinite mottled void. Messenger had created an emotive atmosphere that was both a pure representation of his artistic efforts, and an empty, battered, bruise-colored space to be filled with the viewer’s own pathos. Floating just on the surface, however, were the

The Golden Ratio also can refer to consonance, symmetry, and evenness. Messenger’s early drawings rest in that halocline of abstract, emotional heat, and the cool calculation of mathematics and architecture. While Messenger’s work is familial with that of LeWitt and Martin, where Messenger becomes exogamous with them is in his own intended imperfection. Messenger conjures beauty through the often ungainly collision of the organic and the theoretical. The depiction of the theoretical ideal by the artist in the real world renders the interpretation imperfect. On closer inspection, the visible hand, the shaky line, the collapsing pattern is indicative of just

gossamer strands of Messenger’s pattern. The triangles, tightly clustered in the center, spiraling outward – or inward – seemed to add to the vertiginous effect. As each of the artist’s mistakes

how completely Messenger envisions his process, from attempts at perfection, to welcoming error, to allowing a generative mathematical process to become the basis for an audacious and

compounded, the triangles warped, tilted, stretched, and strained against their own orderliness. A net formed over the soothing richness of space, seemingly saving the viewer from plummeting headlong into its envelope. It took months to finish, but Messenger was convinced not only of his own well-being, but also of his own abilities.

mature body of work for an artist barely in his 30s.

To date, since Gethsemane’s, there have been Veils of varying sizes, some as small as 11 x 15 inches, others as large as five by eight feet. Always, the system is the same, though the color of the ink and the background, and texture of the ground change greatly from one to another, with each drawing a doppelganger of the one previous, recognizable as similar, but never anywhere near the same.

CCD, January 2014

Untitled 2005 Water & ink on paper. 56·8 x 75·6 cm (223/8” x 29¾”)

Untitled 2006 Ink on paper. 56·8 x 75·2 cm (223/8” x 295/8”)

Untitled 2004 Ink on paper. 49·8 x 70·2 cm (195/8” x 275/8”)

Untitled 2004 Ink on paper. 49·8 x 70·2 cm (275/8” x 595/8”)

Untitled 2005 Ink on paper. 56·8 x 75·2 (223/8” x 295/8”)

Untitled 2004 Ink on paper. 49·8 x 70·2 cm (195/8” x 275/8”)

Untitled 2006 Pen & ink on paper 26 x 36 cm (101/4” x 141/4”)

Untitled 2007 Pen & ink on paper 26 x 36 cm (101/4” x 141/4”)

Untitled 2006 Pen & ink on paper 26 x 36 cm (101/4” x 141/4”)

Untitled 2005 Graphite on paper. 37·1 x 56·8 cm (145/8” x 223/8”)

Untitled 2005 Ink on paper. 36·8 x 49·8 cm (141/2” x 195/8”)

I/III 2005 Ink on paper. 37·8 x 56·5 cm (147/8” x 221/4”)

II/III 2005 Ink on paper. 37·8 x 56·5 cm (147/8” x 221/4”)

III/III 2005 Ink on paper. 37·8 x 56·5 cm (147/8” x 221/4”)

Biography Born 1980 London, England Art Education M.A. Royal College of Art, London (2003–05) B.A. Camberwell College of Arts, London (2000–03) Messenger’s work has been shown in various exhibitions internationally, including; Textility, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey 2012, The Art of Collecting, Flint Institute of Arts, Michigan 2011/12, Six Veils, Davidson Contemporary, New York 2011, 40 Artists–80 Drawings, Burton Art Gallery & Museum, Devon UK 2011, Now WHAT?, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach 2010, Straightedge, Davidson Contemporary, New York (solo) 2008, You Silently (Two): Image-Object-Text, Courtauld Institute of Art, London 2008. His work is held in both private and public collections, including Williams College Museum of Art, and Museum of Art Rhode Island School of Design. Messenger currently lives and works in London.

This catalogue was produced in conjunction with the exhibition Early Drawings at Davidson Contemporary, New York City, 6 February – 15 March 2014 All works © Sam Messenger 2014 Studio photography by Ali Elai/Camerarts Catalogue design by Thomas Messenger Printed by LOG-ON, Inc. New York NY