Drawing Now - Salon du Dessin Contemporain, Paris
March 23 - 26, 2017
Carreau du Temple, Le Marais Drawing Then, Drawing Now, Drawing everywhere.
72 emerging and established galleries assembled in the historical Carreau du Temple, an ancient Temple Enclave where it is clandestinely said, burial grounds were dug up and placed elsewhere for the recent refurbishment of the site. After being a leather goods market for some decades, the building is used today as a government owned venue for everyone in Paris to use (and rent out). “Drawing Now” maintained two floors dedicated to works on paper, drawings and the publications celebrating the medium: Political figures, views of land, sea and sky, abstract doodles and books, either rubbed out or drawn into, a varying mesh of variation and at points over saturation in this small venue was the case, yet distinctive works did stand tall.One can see a single set of rhythmic, morphing signature wood grains and rhythmic swirls, and documentation of a fallen tree by Giusseppe Penone, steps away from two Vidya Gastaldon enchantments- drawn visions of the lightness of being. A top installation entitled “The Presidential Suite” by Travis Somerville took on the 52 presidents of the United States amidst real target practice posters. There were four known assassinations and quite a few attempted or plotted in the history of US Presidents. The installation measures and questions the value and influence of the US Presidential position over time and its effect on the world’s love and hate relationship with governing administrations. Travis was enjoyably present for questioning. Christos Venetis, stood out with his analog diary of daily life in Greece, revealed in a group of intuitive and realistic pencil drawings on the inside of old book covers. The conceptual valor of these, although repetitive, is infinite in possibility. The inside of the book cover is his screen, recording daily local life of Grecians, seemingly vintage, but of contemporary genre.
On the emergence level downstairs from the main sections, noteworthy was the elegant drawing installation of Miranda Meijer entitled “Things Series” consisting of a dozen large jewel sized pencil (as well as on occasion gold leaf and ink) drawings in esoteric shapes creatively spread onto the main wall of the booth. Impactful, aesthetic, and could have been created by the Sol Lewitt of the Gnome world. Not to omit: the poetic drawings of Kenyan artist, Peterson Kamwathi, whose everyman figure collaged onto all the drawings, individually or in groups were executed with a graceful hand, a spiritual essence of man partaking in an active ritual in the surrounding dreamy environment evoking a notion in my head - “Spirit ritual.”
Other relevant sightings : The impeccable clouds of Dorothea Schulz, the innuendo collage drawings by Hippolyte Hentgen, the optical visionary drawings of Henri Jacobs and the surrealist portrait alterations in gouache on vintage photographs by Tom Butler, Jerémie Bennequin’s specimen from his Albertine Disparue 2005-15, an impressive pile of a rubbed out ink and eraser residue placed next to the volume of Marcel Proust’s “A la recherché du temps perdu.”
For the record, the incredulous and unique voice of Daniel Zeller’s endless drawing are recorded onto nearly around ten works taking the viewer into networks of abstract, biomorphic motifs indicative of maps, the microscopic or cosmic world.
