DARK DRAWN 2018

Published on Thursday, 12 April 2018 09:57

DARK DRAWN

 

Artists
Vanna Bowles, Ian Damerell, Algirdas Jakas, Robert Johansson, Bas Ketelaars,
Lynette Smith

Curator
Ian Damerell  

 

Dark Drawn aims at being a powerful statement through the medium of drawing. Through recent decades drawing has fortified its position as a challenging opponent to other media, capable of astounding audiences with untraditional and unexpected manoeuvres. In order to present this to a wider audience, we have attempted to compile a drawing exhibition that combines traditions with contemporaneity. These art works show drawing as neither an academic exercise nor a sketch, but as a complete and definitive artistic statement.

In this exhibition, we have introduced six artists from different countries: Australia, Great Britain/Norway, Lithuania, Holland, and Sweden. It presented artists who are loosely connected through their approach to drawing and observation. The works in Dark Drawn were diverse both in their goal and method. However, what characterises Dark Drawn is a connection through a sensuality achieved from the elusive medium of drawing, the spare intimacy of the technique itself, coupled to drawing’s immediacy when reinterpreting the observed.

All around us, we find drawing performing vital roles in our everyday life. Christian Rattemeyer wrote in Vitamin D2 New Perspectives in Drawing (Phaidon, 2013): ‘… we afford drawing a place in the continuum of activities that go almost unnoticed from telephone scribbles… to the ubiquitous children’s drawings…’ This activity extends itself from graffiti to architectural diagrams etc. Yet, fulfilling drawing’s true potential within the realm of contemporary visual art has been a relatively recent achievement. Historically, masterworks or iconic works in drawing have been rare in comparison to painting.

Dark Drawn is loosely based on Joseph Conrad’s iconic novel Heart of Darkness (1899; in 1979 Francis Ford Coppola adapted its story for his film Apocalypse Now). Here, surrounding nature that destabilises Marlow’s contact Kurtz, acts as a metaphor for darkness, the potential for melancholia and madness, latent in each of us, ready to reveal itself when circumstance forces itself upon us. Thus, the concept of darkness in the Dark Drawn exhibition relates to a metaphoric and transformative dimension, where the observed world acts as a trigger for artworks to be drawn out from the observer herself rather than as a source for resemblance.

 

VANNA BOWLES (SWEDEN)

Vanna Bowles’s work developed from early performances, e.g. in the boxing ring, to Gothic training sculptures (both with Robert Johansson) and on to the figurative surreal drawings exhibited at Kunstnerforbundet, Oslo, recently. There is, undoubtedly, a dark quality not only to the drawing approach, but far deeper in the drive that is evident behind her works. Vanna Bowles states about her work: “The borders between nature and culture, presence and unawareness, are starting points for my work, and I try to create ambivalent images shifting between those contradictions.”

Lithuanian artist Algirdas Jakas’s work links closely to the exhibition concept of ‘Heart of Darkness’. One drawing in particular, captures the image of the novel’s Kurtz and his outpost in the jungle. Jakas has, previously worked with graphics, but his move into drawing has resulted in the inclusion of a dark element that infuses his newer work.

ROBERT JOHANSSON (SWEDEN)

Swedish artist Robert Johansson has been involved with drawing for well over a decade. His figurative drawings offer a strange parallel world… both the immediate perception and the inner layers of his work play with our imagination such as in ‘Long Distance Operator’. Johansson says himself that he works with collage within drawing, photography and sculpture. He often uses wood in his works and the term ‘rundgang’ is pivotal, which acts as a binding element throughout the works.

BAS KETELAARS (NETHERLANDS)

Bas Ketelaars states that drawing is also about destruction: ‘After two layers the whole drawing was erased, then three new layers. The middle part is completely black and the paper pushed to its limits. Each new layer destroys somehow the layer before. At the edges of the drawing there’s a lot of information about previous stages. I like the ambiguousness of the middle part which is at the same time suggesting depth as a black hole and blocking this depth by reflecting the light, thus showing the drawing as an ordinary object.’ These mysterious works, shimmering with the history of their surfaces, are drawn and built from (part) destroyed layers that suggest the ambiguousness that is essential to the group show ‘Dark Drawn’. This making of images through merging layers offers an interesting surface values to the works that poses deeper questions about observation.

LYNETTE SMITH (AUSTRALIA)

Having studied linguistics and philosophy in addition to Fine Art, Lynette Smith explores and combines a variety of techniques, including drawing. Her ‘folded drilled papers’ offer, for example, a contrast to traditional modes of drawing. Here using a drill as a drawing tool, she explores the physical alteration of the paper surface. In the video installation ‘Why Things are The Way They Are’ she explores nature/landscape, whereas in ‘Ambiguity (A Number Of Drawings)’, using a ball of paper, she utilises video of hands, right and left, closing and opening slowly. These are silent except for the sound of paper crumpling. Lynette Smith represents the experimental and curious approach to observation.

IAN DAMERELL (WALES)

Drawn elements from ‘Arkitekton’, a sub category of his ‘Institution Series’, date back over a decade. Having concentrated on writing an art philosophy book for some time, this showing of his dark, ambiguous and mysterious architectural drawings, is a return to full time exhibiting. After studying at the Royal College of Art, London and tutoring at Goldsmith’s College of Art, London, Damerell has spent most of his life in Oslo, Norway as well as, more recently, Lithuania. These disjointed architectonic are evidence of a personal observation of the relationship between the human eye and monumental architecture, especially when forlorn and in a state of ruin. It acts as a metaphor for human endeavour – that is, how the confidence of building spawns its eventual destruction.

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Manager
Rasa Antanavičiūtė

Graphics and layout
Laura Grigaliūnaitė

Architect
Justinas Dūdėnas

Exhibition guides
Gediminas Jasinskas, Indrė Lišauskaitė, Paulina Vituščanka

Thanks to
Goda Aleksaitė, Viktorija Damerell, Mantas Kišonas, Kęstutis Minderis, Linas Ramanauskas, Saulius Valius,
National Gallery of Arts, Ltd Expobalta

 

Organiser

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Photos by Laurynas Skeisgiela

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