{"id":44971,"date":"2020-03-06T16:23:01","date_gmt":"2020-03-06T21:23:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artoronto.ca\/?p=44971"},"modified":"2020-03-07T13:29:45","modified_gmt":"2020-03-07T18:29:45","slug":"drawing-unlimited-at-propeller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/v2.artoronto.ca\/?p=44971","title":{"rendered":"Drawing Unlimited at Propeller"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Propeller Art Gallery is currently hosting an exhibition of drawings. It is the result of an open juried call. The curators \u2013 Joseph Muscat and Keijo Tapanainen \u2013 encouraged those submitting to \u2018stretch the boundaries of the medium\u2019, hence the title of the show Drawing Unlimited<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The two Curators: Keijo Tapanainen (left), Joseph Muscat (right), and Lisa Johnson, Exhibition Co-ordinator (middle)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Installation view of Drawing Unlimited<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are\nthirty three works on display, all by different artists. But it turns out,\nrather, that most of the submissions, though not all, fell safely within the\nboundaries. Most do not challenge the viewer\u2019s expectation of what a drawing\nought to be. The normative nature of this expectation points to the fact that\nit is difficult to push these boundaries since there are no definitive criteria\nby which to measure such a thing. What should a drawing be? No one can say\nexactly. Talk of \u2018stretching\u2019 these boundaries, then, is apt in the sense that\nthe concept of drawing is elastic.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Maureen Paxton, Rake,\u00a0<\/em>2016, graphite on paper, 30″ x 40″ framed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider, for example, the submission by Harold Sikkema titled Revolve Face<\/em>. It consists in a spiral of distorted images derived from a camera aimed at a revolving door. It shows various people pushing on the plate glass on their way in and out of a building. It is in some ways an arresting image, but in what sense is it a drawing? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Harold Sikkema, Revolve Face,\u00a0<\/em>2019, algorithmic video drawing on dibond, 24″ x 24″<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pnina Dinkin\u2019s piece, Change is needed in construct of His-story<\/em>, depicts four pairs of bare feet and attached along the top are a series of wires that suspend a blank book at the base of the board. Certainly, it has a drawn element, but the overall work is best described as a sculpture of sorts. But then again, the wires could be interpreted as lines belonging to a three-dimensional drawing. Who is to say that drawing is two-dimensional in nature after all?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Pnina Dinkin, Change is needed in construct of His-story,<\/em>\u00a02019, charcoal on plywood, gel medium, wire, book, plaster, 36″ x 48″<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While drawing cannot be precisely defined, the curators proffer a description of what we aim to do when drawing. Citing Anna Moszynska, they explain that it is \u2018a direct and immediate method of trawling the imagination, unlocking the collective and personal unconscious…It allows the hand to give free expression to that which is buried in the recesses of the mind…\u2019. This is an apt characterisation of what most of the works attempt to do perhaps \u2013 to mine the unconscious. I take this to mean that the artist is attempting to give expression to what she intuitively feels rather than what she thinks, that is, what is otherwise expressible in words, i.e., conceptually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Melissa Arruda, Anxiety Drawing #4,<\/em>\u00a02020, ink on bristol board, 30″ x 40″<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This idea\nechoes the views of the enlightenment philosopher and a principal founder of\nmodern aesthetics, Immanuel Kant. Kant argued that the genuine artist \u2013 or\n\u2018genius\u2019 as he put it \u2013 is able to liberate our perceptual faculties from their\ninnate conceptual constraints. Doing this is called the \u2018free play of the\nimagination\u2019, where the imagination is our innate faculty to build the\nphenomenal world. He maintained in this regard that appearances, i.e.,\nphenomena, are not passively received by us but rather are essentially\nconstructed by us. Ideally, then, the artist according to Kant aims to\nrepresent the phenomenal world in a way that encourages the viewer to see things\nin a way that is free from how we naturally see the things around us \u2013 to nudge\nus from our predictable way of categorising the world under our concepts. And\nit is in this way that drawings can stretch us, to continue our metaphor. Our\nexperience of beauty derives from the pleasure of this free play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of the drawings in this show, while many of them are pleasing to the eye, few engender a sense of beauty in the way Kant describes it. That is, the drawings as a rule do not seriously challenge our ways of seeing the world, do not stretch us. This is evident, for example, in Lisandro Pena\u2019s Warthog<\/em> which is a delectable rendering of the animal. Nonetheless it doesn\u2019t shake up how we see the world in any stimulating way. I do not pretend to suppose that Kant here offers the way of evaluating the artworks, but his ideas can help in a small way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lisandro Pena, Warthog,\u00a0<\/em>2018, pencil and carbon, 11″ x 14″<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But let\u2019s\nnot be too earnest. This is a lovely collection of drawings. They include\nintimate portraits, delightful landscapes, a relief on wood of the pelvis bones\nexpertly rendered and a homage to Gaudi in the form of a small drawing in\nballpoint pen. The exhibition has been masterfully hung to juxtapose the\ndrawings in a stimulating and thought-provoking manner. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Installation views of Drawing Unlimited<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hugh Alcock<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Images are\ncourtesy of Propeller Art Gallery<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Exhibition information: February 19 \u2013 March 8, 2020, Propeller Art Gallery, 30 Abell Street Toronto. Gallery hours: Wed – Sat 12 – 6 pm, Sun 12 – 5 pm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Hugh Alcock<\/strong><\/p>\n

The exhibition has been masterfully hung to juxtapose the drawings in a stimulating and thought-provoking manner<\/p>\n

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