Claire Gilman

Roger Malbert

This book explores the variety of ways in which contemporary artists from around the world have come to approach drawing as the primary, sometimes the sole, element of their practice, and one which is autonomous: an end in itself rather than a means to an end in another, more substantial medium. In an era of advanced technologies where image production has accelerated potentially beyond the capacity of human attention what values can be attributed to the slow, deliberate process of drawing by hand? The artworks featured in this volume are not confined to traditional tools one can also draw on a computer, tablet or smartphone, and examples of digital drawing are incorporated into the narrative not as a separate category but as one medium among many. Grouped thematically by specific approaches, including abstraction and figuration, nature and artifice, social observation and critique, with essays and feature spreads for each section, this selection of international artists of diverse backgrounds and experience includes not only recognizable names such as Michael Armitage, Camille Henrot, Robert Longo, Amy Sillman and Kara Walker, but also a host of emerging talents. Beautifully presented in a visually appealing and tactile format with the feel of an artists portfolio, this is an inspiring overview of the best drawing practice today.

Drawing in the Present Tense

For Opacity

Rashid Johnson

Jeremy Sigler

Universally accessible and employing common visual tropes such as the monochrome and the grid, Johnson's work is also self-referential, making specific allusion to his upbringing in Chicago and the Afro-centric values of his parents. In Rashid Johnson: Anxious Men, the artist creates a site-specific installation in the Drawing Room gallery. The core of the exhibition is a new series of black-soap-and-wax-on-tile portraits that Johnson calls his “anxious men.” Executed by digging into a waxy surface, they enact a kind of drawing through erasure and represent the first time Johnson has worked figuratively outside of photography or film, and on such a small scale. Whereas Johnson’s previous work has taken a more cerebral approach to questions of race and political identity, the drawn portraits confront the viewer with a visceral immediacy. The portraits are set within a multi-sensory environment that includes wallpaper featuring a photograph of the artist’s father from the year Johnson was born, and an audio sound track comprised of Melvin Van Peebles’s “Love, That’s America,” a song that originally appeared in Peebles’s 1970 film Watermelon Manand that was recently pressed into service by the Occupy Wall Street movement. In this way, the exhibition, documented in this volume, creates an immersive space that implicates not only the artist but also the viewer in its interrogation of selfhood and identity.

Claire Gilman

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