Category Archives: Drawing

Danica Phelps, Walking 9-5 Series

Graphite on folded paper, 30.625 x 20.5 inches; CREDIT: //www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Walking-9-5–Graz/D328CC010A678FB5

“Walking 9-5, March 21, 2001, Greenpoint, Brooklyn to Riverdale, Bronx, NYC” (2001), Pencil, watercolor and collage on paper, 30 × 22 1/4 in; CREDIT

: 116 small-sized drawings (2002)

: 116 small-sized drawings (2002)

The earliest work in the exhibition is Walking Amsterdam 9-5 , a sprawling installation of 116 small-sized drawings. Danica created this work in 2002 for the Amsterdam gallery Annet Gelink. She spent three weeks in the city, and 13 days walking through it, for exactly 8 hours every day. Point of departure for these excursions was always the central station, and every one of them proceeded in as straight a line as possible in all directions, 20° off the direction taken the previous day. At 5pm she would look for the nearest means of public transport in order to return to the city centre. One of her 8-hour hikes took her to a suburb of Utrecht, another all the way to Zanfort. The individual drawings on this wall are clustered by days. One lists all the day’s activities, the others represent situations and objects on which Phelps spent money. Every red stripe stands for a Dollar spent, and green stripe for a Dollar earned. The price of each drawing (from 30 to 800 Euros) depends on how much the artist likes the drawing. As she believes that the determination of the price is the final aesthetic decision, the price becomes part of the work itself – and is noted, in US$, on the drawing itself. If a certain drawing finds a buyer, Phelps creates a copy of it on tracing paper, which then replaces the sold drawing in the series. On this ‘second-generation’ drawing she paints a number of green stripes that corresponds to the price fetched by the original, the name of the collector, the gallery and the date of the sale. This in turn renders the copy unique again – and means that it is itself now up for sale. The presentation at Nolan Judin Berlin is the first chance since their exhibition in Amsterdam in 2002 to buy these drawings. [credit]

Michael x. Ryan, Roadstains (2007)

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Roadstains #3: Coke spill from parked car on Potomac Ave. Chicago, Fall 2004 / Installation in process, view #3, Hand cut wood relief: Finnish and Baltic Birch plywood painted with latex paint to match wall color, 2017

Ryan traced spilled drinks in the street as he went walking. He transferred them to wood carvings painted white.

Francis Alÿs, Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing) [1997]

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“Paradox of Praxis 1 (1997) is the record of an action carried out under the rubric of “sometimes making something leads to nothing.” For more than nine hours, Alÿs pushed a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it completely melted. And so for hour after hour he struggled with the quintessentially Minimal rectangular block until finally it was reduced to no more than an ice cube suitable for a whisky on the rocks, so small that he could casually kick it along the street.”

Nasca Culture, “Pampas de Jumana” (200 BCE – 500 CE)

CC BY-SA 4.0
File:Líneas de Nazca, Nazca, Perú, 2015

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“The lines are found in a region of Peru just over 200 miles southeast of Lima, near the modern town of Nasca. In total, there are over 800 straight lines, 300 geometric figures and 70 animal and plant designs, also called biomorphs. Some of the straight lines run up to 30 miles, while the biomorphs range from 50 to 1200 feet in length (as large as the Empire State Building).”

What Are the Lines?

The lines are known as geoglyphs – drawings on the ground made by removing rocks and earth to create a “negative” image. The rocks which cover the desert have oxidized and weathered to a deep rust color, and when the top 12-15 inches of rock is removed, a light-colored, high contrasting sand is exposed. Because there’s so little rain, wind and erosion, the exposed designs have stayed largely intact for 500 to 2000 years.

Scientists believe that the majority of lines were made by the Nasca people, who flourished from around A.D. 1 to 700.

Certain areas of the pampa look like a well-used chalk board, with lines overlapping other lines, and designs cut through with straight lines of both ancient and more modern origin.

The Theories

The Kosok-Reiche astronomy theories held true until the 1970s when a group of American researchers arrived in Peru to study the glyphs. This new wave of research started to poke holes in the archeo-astronomy view of the lines (not to mention the radical theories in the ‘60s relating to aliens and ancient astronauts).

Johan Reinhard, a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, brought a multidisciplinary approach to the analysis of the lines: “Look at the large ecological system, what’s around Nasca, where were the Nasca people located.” In a region that receives only about 20 minutes of rain per year, water was clearly an important factor.

“It seems likely that most of the lines did not point at anything on the geographical or celestial horizon, but rather led to places where rituals were performed to obtain water and fertility of crops,” wrote Reinhard in his book The Nasca Lines: A New Perspective on their Origin and Meanings.

Anthony Aveni, a former National Geographic grantee, agrees, “Our discoveries clearly showed that the straight lines and trapezoids are related to water … but not used to find water, but rather used in connection with rituals.”

“The trapezoids are big wide spaces where people can come in and out,” says Aveni. “The rituals were likely involved with the ancient need to propitiate or pay a debt to the gods…probably to plead for water.”

Reinhard points out that spiral designs and themes have also been found at other ancient Peruvian sites. Animal symbolism is common throughout the Andes and are found in the biomorphs drawn upon the Nasca plain: spiders are believed to be a sign of rain, hummingbirds are associated with fertility, and monkeys are found in the Amazon—an area with an abundance of water.

“No single evaluation proves a theory about the lines, but the combination of archeology, ethnohistory, and anthropology builds a solid case,” says Reinhard. Add new technological research to the mix, and there’s no doubt that the world’s understanding of the Nasca lines will continue to evolve.

Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla “Land Mark (Foot Prints)” (2001-2002)

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The Land Mark series was a civil disobedience campaign. Over 2001 and 2002, Allora and Calzadilla, together with a group of activists, encroached into one of the United States Navy Bombing range in a beach of Vieques, Puerto Rico. The U.S. Military and NATO have used this location for various military exercises for more than 60 years.

The two artists collaborated with the resistance group to produce rubber shoes that came with distinct soles. The customized shoe soles were engraved with different messages and images that silently yet strappingly put forward the grievances, opinions, and demands of the protestors.

Even though the activists entered the realms of the bombing range illegally, their objective was to bring about their messages under the attention of the military staff employed in that particular military facility. Some of these memoranda were explicit, while the others subtly hinted at their claims. The primary objective, however, was to reclaim the disputed territory, thereby rendering the term landmark with a whole new meaning.

Land Mark discusses the discrimination and forceful acquiring of Vieques by the U.S. Navy, which was initiated during the Second World War and ended only in 2003. The military practiced bombing and secretly tested various technologies, including the hazardous napalm and radioactive shells on the island’s residents during 1969.

Richard Long, “A Line Made by Walking” (1967)

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Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking (1967)

Left a trace
Art made by walking
it was a fundamental interruption of art history: anticipates a widespread interest in the performative

This formative piece was made on one of Long’s journeys to St Martin’s from his home in Bristol. Between hitchhiking lifts, he stopped in a field in Wiltshire where he walked backwards and forwards until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed this work, and recorded his physical interventions within the landscape.
Although this artwork underplays the artist’s corporeal presence, it anticipates a widespread interest in performative art practice. This piece demonstrates how Long had already found a visual language for his lifelong concerns with impermanence, motion and relativity.

Gallery label, May 2007

“Thus walking—as art—provided a simple way for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement. These walks are recorded in my work in the most appropriate way for each different idea: a photograph, a map, or a text work. All these forms feed the imagination.” − Richard Long

Regina José Galindo “Who Can Erase The Traces?” (2003)

Regina José Galindo, Quién puede borrar las huellas? (Who can erase the traces?, 2003), performance, Guatemala City, photo: José Osorio

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In her most celebrated work, Who Can Erase the Traces? (¿Quién puede borrar las huellas?, 2003), she walked barefoot through the streets of Guatemala City, from the Palacio Nacional de la Cultura to the Corte de Constitucionalidad, carrying a basin filled with human blood into which she periodically dipped her feet. The trail of footprints visualized her reaction to the recent news that Efraín Ríos Montt, a former military dictator responsible for the most destructive period of the country’s internal conflict, had been permitted to run for president despite constitutional prohibitions. In this work, the line between Galindo’s body as object and subject was so subtle that the blood covering her feet appeared to be her own; she embodied the war’s victims, taking their blood as hers and appropriating their suffering.

Franko B “I Miss You” (1999-2005)

The artist performs nude, walking up and down a catwalk, creating lines with drips of his own blood. The canvas below is later turned into paintings.

The work is documented with both photographs and video:

Performances: [credit]

2005

Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Belgium

2003

Tate Modern, London, UK

2002

Circolo des Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain
Cenpi, Beograd, Serbia
Gallerija Kapelica, Ljubljana, Slovenia

2000

Art Live, Turin, Italy
Malmo, Sweden
Fierce Festival, Birmingham, UK
Beaconsfield, London, UK

1999

Antwerp, Belgium

Francis Alÿs “The Green Line” (2004)

video stills of a man dripping paint as he walks

The Green Line, Jerusalem, Israel, 2004; 17:41 min
In collaboration with Philippe Bellaiche, Rachel Leah Jones, and Julien Devaux.

Alÿs performed this walk by carrying a can of paint with a hole in it as he traced a portion of the “Green Line” that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem. There is a filmed documentary of the walk.

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“In the summer of 1995 I performed a walk with a leaking can of blue paint in the city of São Paulo. The walk was then read as a poetic gesture of sorts. In June 2004, I re-enacted that same performance with a leaking can of green paint by tracing a line following the portion of the ‘Green Line’ that runs through the municipality of Jerusalem. 58 liters of green paint were used to trace 24 km. Shortly after, a filmed documentation of the walk was presented to a number of people whom I invited to react spontaneously to the action and the circumstances within which it was performed.” (credit)

Susan Stockwell “Taking a Line for a Walk” (2002-03)

Taking a Line for a Walk from Susan Stockwell on Vimeo.

“12 minute film, 2002

A film documenting a performance called Taking a Line For a Walk by artist Susan Stockwell. It shows a line being drawn around Stockwell in South London. Susan, with her Line Drawing machine, followed the boundary of old Stockwell and left a continuous line with temporary white paint. It lasted for 2 weeks, was 2.7 miles long and took 3 hours to draw. The idea was to make a work where a little known area of London was defined and mapped physically for all to see. The map was taken into 3 dimensions on a life size scale and turned into a walking drawing, a trace of an idea and a performance.

The performance was part of Stockwell Festival and came out of a project called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk: Mapping Stockwell’ which Susan did with pupils from Stockwell Park School.
Shot by Polly Nash, edited in collaboration with Susan Stockwell and produced by Spectacle Productions.
spectacle.co.uk/catalogue_production.php?id=165

Images from the performance, Taking a Line for a Walk have been published in the book, The Art of Walking: a field guide by David Evans Blackdog, 2013.
blackdogonline.com/all-books/the-art-of-walking.html”

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‘Taking a Line for Walk’ (2003) was a performance where the artist drew a white line around the area of Stockwell in South London defining and mapping the district. The line was made with white poster paint and a Line Drawing Machine, it was 1.7 miles in length and lasted for 2 weeks. The idea was to physically define a little known area of London while also making a 3-dimensional walking drawing and a trace of an idea. It also references the artist’s name alluding to her identity and boundary setting.

The performance was part of Stockwell Festival and came out of a project called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk: Mapping Stockwell’, which Susan ran with students from Stockwell Park School.
A 12-minute film was made that documents the performance, also called ‘Taking a Line for a Walk’.

‘Line Drawing’ is a 2-minute film that examines the line as it’s being drawn in ‘Taking a Line For a Walk’. The film concentrates on the essence of the line, the variety of marks, speed, character, rhythm and pavement surfaces. It creates a mesmeric, meditative and beautiful reflection of the drawings process and everyday pavements, seldom considered or seen. It’s sometimes difficult to know if the artist is taking the line for a walk or the line is leading the artist; perhaps a metaphor for artistic process and those magical moments when the art work takes on a life of its own.

Film shot by Polly Nash, edited by Polly Nash and Susan Stockwell, produced by Spectacle Productions. (credit)