In this online Drawing Exhibition we present works by Maria Barnas, Erik van Lieshout, Josse Pyl, Dick Verdult and Wilfredo Prieto. All artists in the selection share a preference for going off the beaten path and, while finding very different formal outcomes, their practices are ofter rooted in drawing as a mean of investigating ideas.
In 'Versions of Goethe' (2014), Maria Barnas uses the fraying edges of representation -both visually as in content- and presents us with altered versions of the same image that each seem to demand originality. It is exactly in their difference that they come alive.
The selected drawing is part of a group of 9 drawings that are related to Erik van Lieshout's film 'Ego' (2013), which premiered at the Venice Biennial Central Pavilion in 2013. In 'Ego' the artist portrays his family, who all work as social workers. The film centres on the question of why people do things for others, delving into the idealism that is at play.
Josse Pyl explores the hierarchies between the tools of speech, communication, the body, and decision-making. How words pass through human and other bodies, how language and speech are formed and disintegrate.
The serie of drawings 'Dibujos Pasajeros' were started by Dick Verdult while travelling on a plane: "on the one hand, to unconsciously reflect what I'm seeing, appreciating, or suffering and, on the other, include the thinking that next to me there is a passenger, 30 cm away, trying not to see what I'm drawing"
The drawing by Wilfredo Prieto relates to his performative installation "A light in the distance", presented in 2009 at the biennial Havana. Through a transparent balloon 4m in diameter, is hung a Led light source, everything was elevated to a height of 300m high above a building Havana. The project created the illusion of a new star in the sky.