Street Selections: Spring 2003

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AmvBnv I am preoccupiedwith crackedlines in pathways,grout in brick walls, grassand stones,towers' leaves,chimneys,vinyl siding, forests,and piles of dirt. Theseobjectsand siteshavesentimental value for me-they are commonplaceyet poetic.

My useof line and form playswith the vocabularyof representation.Rather than creatingrealistic depictionsof space,I call attention to the devices-foreshortening,the overlappingof forms, the jrxtaposition of variousshapesof different sizesacrossthe picture plane,perspective,and so forth-traditionally usedto createthe illusion of three dimensionson a flat surface.In Pointing,I 'W'oosterStreetand draw over certain areasin plasticine.These take sectionsof brick walls on drawn lines deviatefrom the straight original grout lines, bowing and bending, suggesting dimensionality.The lines' relationshipto the walls on which they appearvarieswith eachdrawing; someare quiet interventionsthat graduallyveerfrom the original grout lines,while othershave shifts in scalethat are more abrupt, correspondingto changesin the wall's topography.ln Chute, the grout lines get smallerand smallerasthey climb the wall. This gradualshift in scaleis borrowed from foreshorteningtechniques.

Ultimately, the free-handquality of the drawingsand the rubbery nature of the plasticinelines preventtotal illusion. Rather than a deceptiveconstructionof space,volume, or depth, the drawingscreatean obviouspictorial spacethat pairs reality with artifice.

B oRN 1970 , r r uE L r n r n r , l N ; t- tve s AND wo RKs tN BRo o KL YN,NY.

Pointing,2oo3 Plasticine on brickwall Dimensions variable

Chute,2oo3 Plasticine on wall 60 x 744 in.

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J e s s e BeRcow Er z, MRtt B u A , andW n n o SHe lle v (B B S ) In the beginning there was the Impact Addict. His videos were unforgettable: performance artist 'W'rap so he could survive falls from various David Leslie wrapping himself in layers of Bubble heights or have a karate team try to kick the snot out of him.

Then, too, there were those images of astronauts doing tasks in free fall. They practiced for this in the belly of a falling airplane. Do you remember Eddie Murphy hanging onto the runaway truck in BeuerlyHills Cop? For a moment it was as if he were in free fall. AII these have little to do with me trying to write and make sketches in my journal on a Greyhound Bus, but maybe, for a moment, this memory overlapped with the other ones.

Does an intersection of unrelated memories combine to make new ideas?I dont know. I decided long ago it would not be helpful to know such things. It would not make me more creative, only more programmatic. I dont even know which of my ideas are good. I wait for people to tell me.

Jessepicked the idea for this piece out of a clump of sketches on my desk. It is hard to say what about it appealed to him, becauseas soon as it became a group project, the question changed from "Can it be done?" to "How many different ways can it be done?" How many ways can you make a drawing with a truck?

-\7S Hereb what we decided to do: 'W'e take turns frantically driving each other around NYC in a U-Haul truck at night. One drives fasr, erratically, hitting potholes, swerving, speeding. The other is suspended in the rear of the truck in a tree-climbing harness, costumed as a monster, rock star, or robot, armed only with a large black marker, attempting to make a drawing on the paper-covered interior walls of the truck.

The resulting drawing is a mapping of the persont body (and drawing tool) fighting for control in the constantly shifting alternation between motion and inertia.

Next: A truck is outfitted with a drawing device on its underside. Each artist takes a turn using it to create an image, directing a team of truck lifters as to the direction in which they should move the truck and with what pressure they should do so. A camera and a contact microphone are recording, amplifying, and outputting live feed.

Finally: The front end of the truck is outfitted with a drawing appendage and camera. A passenger riding in the back of the truck directs the driver of the vehicle via walkie-talkie, viewing the drawing in progress from a monitor and steering the driver towards its realization/destination.

-JB \7e dont always think and act as a group, but one thing is clear: If you're going to be drawing with a rruck, you need three men. A driver, a navigatoE and a third guy to fend off other cars/create trouble. For this, a mid-size U-Haul truck is the perfect vehicle. People seethat orange and silver box approaching them, not knowing exactly who has rented the beast, and, suddenly, all their past auro-rental experiencesflash before their eyes.As for the U-Haul itself, the truck's Ford V-8 engine has to react to the driver's demands, no matter what they may be. The driver's newest mission: to get this machine in touch with its creative side. \We say this truck can draw.

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Drawing WhileDriving (DrawingExperimentswith a Truck),zoo3 Installationwith drawings,videos,and mixedmedia D i me n si onvari s a ble

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H n n n e l l Fr er cHeR Ideas for Luis Camnitzer 1. Draw snapshots borrowed from people who work on the street. Drawings are done on walls, small and intimate.

2. Help people on street (POS) draw ads for products they use. Turn ads (clunky but sincere) into street Posters.

3. POS draw maps of places I should see, eat at, etc. Tirrn maps into street posters and free brochures.

4. Post signs saying "The Drawing Center" on stores and restaurants so people think The Drawing Center (TDC) has turned all the stores into galleries.

5. Same idea as above except we actually put drawings in stores. Each place is a TDC gallery. street signs, etc. Already 6. Motion-activated lights fade on at night to reveal "drawings"-graffiti, doing this in Portland.

7. Post flier template on TDC website. Various artists draw on/fill in template. Post resulting fliers throughout neighborhood.

8. Draw portraits of people who work in storeson street. Place in store windows.

9. Create Xerox magazine of favorite drawings: mostly by friends and kids, though some by bigname artists. Free at stores on stfeet.

10. Project drawings of people, objects, dogs, and buildings onto street walls. Draw them really loose.

'W'rite 11. www.learningtoloveyoumore.com assignments (e.g. "'W'rite your life story in less than a day'') on bathroom stalls and on sidesof buildings.

12. Choose person from street and draw him or her repeatedly.Go home with person; draw possessionsof person; draw friends, family, snapshots,etc. of person. Tirrn drawings into street posters; (sort of) turn person into celebrity.

13. Produce tiny booklets-little drawings with text-about something on my mind. Attach booklets to clothing for sale on street. Cover of booklet: "I like this shirt, (or pants, etc.) too."

14. Give T:-shirtsto POS. Tops of T-shirts printed in Garamond font: "The Drawing Center."

Bottoms of T-shirts, hand-scrawled:"Fuck drawing, I m going to make a video."

15. Give POS large piece of fancy drawing paper. On one side: "Make a drawing of your favorite place to eat in town, then passpaper on to someone elseto do same thing..." Also, date on which paper should be returned to TDC for exhibition. Give out many sheetswith different requests.

16. People draw same thing; transfer results onto wall, images on top of one another, such that drawings all obscure each other. List people who did drawings as if participants in mural.

17. A re-granting project: TDC comes up with quantity of money, which I distribute in amounts of $50 and $100 to POS for public projects. I make pamphlet announcing grant, selectrecipients, help recipients produce project, draw recipients and projects, turn drawings into advertising posters.

18. Chris Johanson does face paintings for free on street. Everyone has Johanson drawings on their faces.

19. Tirrn drawings by various artists into temporary tattoos. Give tattoos away on street.

20. Mix in drawings (by me) with street vendor's merchandise. out of folded sheetsof 1 I x 17 inch 21 . Make four-page Xerox magazines caJledThe-Report paper. Each issue is done with and about an individual I meet in either New York or Portland. and Distribute throughout TDC neighborhood. Set up table on street for making The-Reports distributing various other projects: TDC T-shirts, Johanson face paintings, lecturesabout artists, bools, lists of ideas, etc. Set up on different days throughout exhibition, add more The-RePorts over time. fLet's do this one!-Luis Camnitzerl BoRN 1967 , r H S n H r n M n n t n, CA; L r vEs AND wo RKs tN Po n r r - n Ho, OR .

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Crct rn G n l t e r u R Cecilia Galiena's disarmingly simple icons link the gritty, gravitational concerns of sculpturemaking to the tricky, ethereal language and illusions of drawing. Brick and plaster push their way into the illusionary surfaces of chalked-in cube forms that are so loosely rendered they almost seem like doodles. The effect is paradoxical; the cubes are real, formed by the walls that support them, and provocatively captioned cartoons. Galienat while also being completely pictorial-whimsical meandering sketches of parallel lines read as playful and dreamy scrawls until they suddenly assume descriptive heft upon meeting up with equally casual transversals,becoming "things." It is the magical power of drawing, we are reminded, that can metamorphose line into pictorial space.

The plaful doodles become coded formulations. Two dimensions stand for three by the juxtaposition of an inventory of geometric forms: tiangles, parallelograms,rectangles,ovals,and squaresplaced alongside one another become cubes,cones, and cylinders. The drawings'very simplicity and awkwardness add to their ultimate impact; they expose the arbitrary nature of a system of representation we are used to consuming without thought. Galiena reminds us that the cube we "see" on a page (or a wall) is not a real thing, but only the schematic we have all agreed to accept as the symbol of a cube. It is easy to forget that when we interpret visual symbols we are understanding a language. It is important not to forget.

So, too, with the texts. The enigmatic phrases Galiena scratchesout alongside the drawings are somehow pregnanr with meaning, and in that they clearly reveal their kinship with the solids.

Both the drawings and the words have a kind of irreducible poetic meaning that induces a state of mind beyond analysis; they instill feelings. It is the look of the letters, how they function as designs independent of their meaning as symbols, however, that connects most directly to the drawings. The jerky, idiosyncratic, uneven letters, marching acrossthe uneven landscape of found wall, reveal as much about the conventions of written language as the drawings do about the conventions of spatial representation.The abiliry to communicate the most abstract of ideas through words, and to absorb the most concrete and urgent information through diagrammed images, relies on the interpretation of a small vocabulary of lines and squiggles that have been so tVe think we thoroughly internalized that the act and process of reading is completely forgotten. are looking at the real thing.

Galienat little installation drawings are humble things, but they belie a large and disturbing idea.

'W'ords 'We want our and symbols without clear narrative meaning are extraordinarily destabilizing. information explicit and our language transparent. The artist who reminds us that words and images are tools and that their meanings are not absolute but contextual is deconstructing more than our systems of communicating, she is challenging the way we place ourselves in the world. and discuss -i7hen we ascribe a false realiry to the symbols we have ourselves invented to describe the phenomena around us, we betray a confusion about the difference between what happens in our minds and what (really) happens outside of our heads.A drawing of a cube is not a real cube, and the word "neighborhood" is not a neighborhood. Galiena points this out: She is talking about the language of language.

-Merr B oRN 1953 , r r . rR o n e . l r n l v : L tve s AND wo RKs r N NEw Yo RK, NY.

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R e a e c c nH e R n n R u The paved street is an open-ended sheet on which to leave onet mark. As the street stretches into a road and then a highway it becomes an endless scroll, unrolling into future states marked only by dashed lines - - to be continued. The asphalt strips wrap around the earth's crust like a sheet of paper crumpled around a rock. As tensions build between opposing tectonic forces, cracks begin to show in this thin protective layer. Rock, paper, scissors,the street is creasedand cut in gradual movements. Fissureslead to crevassesand eventually canyons, creating new passagewaysthat delve beneath the surface.

In Street TectonicsI trace imaginary fault lines onto the sidewalks of \Tooster Street. Sidewalk cracks are lines drawn by themselves, the forces not seen or felt. These tiny openings hint at a slow but persistent evolution of the landscape. Street Tbctonicstransposesprecise cracks from the sidewalks of Tokyo onto New York City streets, as if the two hemispheres are subtly being conflated into a single plane.

The animation Samurai Mouie, projected onto a wall between the spaceof the Drawing Room and rhe street, imagines an epic journey through massive cracks in the surface of the pavement. In an awkward origami, the street folds in on itself to reveal a fluid landscape of icebergs populated by malleable walruses. As animals, walruses provide a model of successfuladaptation to extreme conditions and fluctuations in their surroundings. In Samurai Mouie, the samurai-walruses conform their bulbous forms to the imposing scenery of eleventh-century Japan and the anonymous starkness of U.S. cities and interstates of the 1970s. Following the flowing lines of kimonos and airport accessroads to the city, the walruses ultimately merge into the densely plotted grids that extend in every direction.

The animation began as a seriesof scroll drawings to be turned slowly by hand, moving forward and baclcward in both direction and time. In Street Tectonicsand Samurai Mouie, the drawn lines remain flexible and unpredictable to show the potential for multi-dimensional movement on a two-dimensional surface-the possible slips, the openings in the landscape, and the breals in the crust as the natural and man-made environments collide. In the end, a new ice age begins, and the glaciers pave a gleaming white sheet among the confused and twisted surroundings.

Bo RN 1971, t H G n t H r u e l l , l A ; t - tve s AND wo RKs lN Qu EENs, NY.

SamuraiMovie,zoo3 Flashanimation 10 mtn .

StreetTectonics,2oo3 Crayonon sidewalk variable Dimensions

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J nurrP n wl u s I grew up in Suburbia, USA: a sprawling middle-class town without character, soul, sentiment, difference, originaliry, or large trees. In the public spacesof this town, everything is zoned, designated, separated, repeated, and hollow. It is here that I became the violator, the loiterer, and the trespasser.

My work connects me with the world, overcoming the separation I feel from my surroundings.

This separationparallelsthe messagesof division-"Stop," "One-'Way," "No Loitering," "No Stopping, Standing, or Parking"-generated by our public communication systems.Indeed, much of my work is expressedin the public vernacular: By utilizing public signage as a means of personal expression,I communicate the unique nature of the spacethat surrounds the signs, including, temporarily, the beholder! "personal space." I oppose signs' official tone, which, by default, can only address people as "Public" and speak imperatively. Through my use of drawings and handwritten texr, I create the illusion that the signs are speaking as individuals to other individuals rather than as shadowy conglomerates of power to facelessmasses.

I use a photocopier to enlarge my drawings and doodles so that they fit within the dimensions of a particular sign. Each image is then screen-printed onto steel, aluminum, and plastic substratesthe same materials used in regular signs. The resulting images communicate individual expressions of thought, capturing the way we think aloud, sing, hum, or mumble gibberish under our breath in our own personal spaces.The literal and visual imagery of the signs function as antidotes to, and anecdotal expressionsof; personal experiences.Thken from my journal, these "notes-to-self" are often srream-of-consciousnessself-analyzing paradigm sketches. Pulling these sketchesfrom their original personal-journal context and inserting them into the public context of signage itself an act of personal transformation. satirizes my own "dilemmas"-in Installed ar rhe entrance to The Drawing Center, Directory Map was made to resemble the public directories found in museums, libraries, parks, and other large public spacesin which one could easily become disoriented. This particular directory, while running the risk of appearing as one large obsessiveblack scribble, still gives the impression that it could be of some assistancein helping one ground onet psychological whereabouts while in the gallery space. Reassuringly, the sign readssimply, "Here you are," with an arrow pointing to your approximate location.

Outside the building and down the street, three enamel-on-aluminum signs with printed handwritten texts tell a paradoxical tale. Together, they comprise the Get-Go Sign, the sole purpose of which is to acknowledge the unknown, the void-the place where one stands not knowing the why, how, when, or what of anything and everything. \(hen one has no idea of where to even stand, one can turn to this sign for reassuranceabout having no idea. To assistwith the unknowing ways of the Get-Go Sign, the SomewaySign xands for one's futile attempts to decipher a directional strategy for one's existence in the world. Its diagrammatic arrows and texts depict the neurotic tendencies of one trying to be anywhere but the present, its clearly printed black-andwhite letters assuring the viewer of its unknowing certainry.

BoRN 1973 , t r uE n s r C x t c a c o, lN; r tve s AND wo RKS lN CHlcAGo,l L.

DirectoryMap, zoo3 Enamelon Plexiglas 21 X2 5 i n .

Get-GoSign, zoo3 E na melon al umi n um 4 x 8 i n.; 24 x 1 8i n,; 6x 12in.

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is made possible,in part, with the support of The Andy V'arhol Foundation for the Steet Selectiozs Visual Arts. Specialthanks to the Marian Goodman Gallery.

The zooz-zoo3 seasonof the Drawing Papersis made possible,in part, by contributions from Ellen Gallagherand Kathy Fuld.

This is number 37 of the Drawing Paprrs,a seriesof publicationsdocumentingThe Drawing Centert exhibitions and public programsand providing a forum for the study of drawing.The Drawing Paperspublicationsseriesis printed on Monadnock Dulcet roo# SmoothText and Dulcet 8o# Smooth Cover.

Catherine deZegh,er ExecutiueDirecmr

GeorgeNegroponte Presidznt

Board of Directors DitaAmory Chainnan

FrancesBeattyAdler Melva Bucksbaum FrancesDittmer Colin Eisler ElizabethFactor BruceW Ferguson Abby Leigh \Tilliam S. Lieberman Michael Lynne Iris Marden ElizabethRohatyn* Eric C. Rudin Dr. Allen ke Sessoms JeanneC. Thayer* Andrea\Toodner *Emerita

Drawing Center Publications Adam Lehner, kecutiu Editor Luc Derycke, Designn Ann Tarandno, Coordinator The Drawing Center 35'Wooster Street New York, NY 10013 Tel:212-219-2166 Fax:212-966-2976 www.drawingcenter.org @ 2003 The Drawing Center

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