Drawing

Drawing is most often the cornerstone or foundation for other forms of contemporary art, and it can take on many forms: it can be a tool for studying nature, it can be an autonomous, independent piece of work or a part of intermedia art accompanied by an object, video art, or performance, or it can be a part of an installation. Since the 1960s, drawing has freed itself from the sheet of paper and has embarked on an experimental journey toward mass, matter, and material. It has reached physical space by means of the artist’s body and by broadening the medium of sculpture. At the same time, drawing has entered digital space via new technologies, and it is also the record of an action. Drawing has become a free medium. It abandons classical materials – pencil, ink, and paper – and includes physicality and embodiment, as in the artwork A line made by walking (1967) by British artist Richard Long: the artist’s footprints in an open landscape create a new way of understanding drawing as a form of recording processual art. Drawing as a materialized skeleton for sculptural gestures whose lines are taken into space is characteristic of contemporary Polish artist Monika Grzymala. Grzymala creates lines in space with tape and elemental black-and-white aesthetics. While Grzymala’s effort is to delimit space and bring the drawing to monumental installation, Austrian artist Nikolaus Gansterer sees drawing as an intimate process of reflection, a tool for recording sketches, graphs, and instructions. Gansterer’s use of drawing in his work shares equal weight with the objects, installation, and video recordings of the artist’s performances. Examples quoted above show the intermedia use of drawing in contemporary art: drawing is no longer kept in sketchbooks or limited to being a tool for capturing ideas.

The project Post-conceptual Overlaps in Czech Drawing maps contemporary Czech and Slovak drawing since 2014. The aim is not to completely map drawing in contemporary visual art, but to outline an analysis focusing on artists born since the 1970s and works created since 2000. The project is focused on an exhibition activity, the publication of a professional publication and lectures on a given topic.

Author and Curator of the Project: Lenka Sýkorová