Venice Biennale part1

I’ve been away from my computer for a couple of weeks, which is sometimes a really useful thing to do. I had one week drawing down on the South coast and then a week in Venice immersing myself in both contemporary practice and the art of the Renaissance.

There were many drawing issues that I thought about as blog posts when I was making my way around, and I shall pick them out and elaborate on them gradually during the next week or so.

It’s hard to know where to begin, but perhaps a simple post about materials is a good way in.

When going to see a lot of work in a compact period, it can all become a bit of a blur, especially when trying to unpick the concepts used and complex working processes involved. Sometimes it’s therefore a relief to simply look at how someone approaches the materials they use. So as we use the stuff all the time I thought I'd start with paper. 

Sohan Qadri

I was particularly interested in the work of Sohan Qadri. His ‘drawings’ are made directly into and with paper. He dyes papers, makes his own frames for ‘casting’ various paperpulps, scratches into surfaces, pushes holes through, lays objects into wet papers and approaches his paper as a meditative experience.

Each ‘drawing’ and I use the term ‘drawing’ in this case as these are ‘works on paper’ explores the possibility of paper as a substance. As you can see above, he is changing the surface of the paper by both scratching into it and building it up, then he both dyes the pulp and applies dyes to the dry surface with rags, brushes and rollers, so that the surface at times soaks it all up but at other times can't because the roller can't push the dye into shallow depressions. The use of very close tones of colour is very subtle and the repeated simple rhythmic structures fill your field of vision and work as quite meditative experiences. 

The drawings I was looking at were about 4 to 5 feet high, some were using very intense colour and others, like the one above were much cooler and were restricted to examining variations of the properties of black inks and dyes as they are diluted and 'bled' into different areas of paper. See also.

I encountered another artist in a different exhibition also working with paper and its ability to absorb moisture and colour. In this case the artist Zhang Yu was much more concerned with revealing the process than presenting us with a 'finished' image. Zhang Yu had set up a situation whereby three clear acrylic boxes had been filled with stacks of clean white absorbent 'blotting' type paper. Black ink was then added into the boxes and the whole process filmed and played back on accompanying monitors.

Zhang Yu

 You can see the spread of the ink up into the paper pile quite clearly in the image on the monitor above. By the time I got there most of the ink had been absorbed, (see the image below).  The small playback monitor screens were also encased in clear acrylic, so that there was a visual harmony running through the piece. See also.

You could argue that this is sculpture, or installation or time based media. However the artist talks about extending concepts associated with Chinese traditional ink drawing. 

This was a theme I found coming up over and over again over the week, artists often using drawing as a core practice around which they would build various other approaches to their ideas, sometimes going into time based media, sometimes into installation or sculpture, and more often than not exhibiting their drawings alongside these other approaches. 

I shall open this issue out much more in future posts. 

Frontiers Reimagined