Sol Lewitt is the most well-known artist in relation to wall drawings. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of his work is that he developed detailed instructions for his drawings, instructions that meant that he didn’t have to be present when the work was made.
See a speeded up video of a team of people making one of his drawings here.
Instructions can also include
details as to where a work might go as well as who could construct it. For
instance Lewitt stated about one wall drawing bought by the Tate:
'It may be loaned while
still installed at the Tate by being drawn elsewhere. The drawing should be
done by an experienced draftsperson. A white crayon may be used instead of
white chalk - but the lines must be truly white. The crayon smudges less.’ See
He also used to build maquettes
so that he had an idea of how drawings would fit the spaces they were going
into, these would also be sent to the client that was going to construct the
drawings so that they were made aware of his intentions.
Sol Lewitt: Model for a wall drawing
Because architectural spaces
are geometric rather than biomorphic, and almost always constructed from
technical drawings, you often find artists that use geometry using architectural
spaces in order to echo the geometries of the original technical drawings. Edward
Mayer has been transforming space and ordering perception through
large-scale 3D drawings that use simple geometry and everyday materials,
redefining spatial relationships in response to the architectural elements of a
given site. Mayer's recent works have used a range of found materials that he
uses to draw in space, such as pre-fabricated wire shelving, wire fencing and
wire tomato plant cylinders. See:
Edward Mayer
Gerhard Mayer, (no
relation to Edward as far as I know) constructs technical drawings directly onto
walls. See:
His drawings blur the borders between experience, built
space and the space that the image opens up. In particular he often suggests
space simply by means of a few curved lines. He has found one of his basic forms in the
ellipse. The ellipse already possesses an affinity to the spatial, as it can be
easily mistaken for a circle seen in perspective. Straight lines converging also create an illusion of space, Mayer plays with these forms, often creating complex patterns that seems to disintegrate the very space that his more controlled lines open.
Gerhard Mayer
Krista Svalbonas
Clint Fulkerson also
explores geometric figures in his wall drawings. However his approach is more
organic, developing shapes and patterns as he draws. This video gives you a
very good idea of how he works. Like Gerhard Mayer he breaks up the flat
surfaces of the walls he draws over, the meshes he creates sometimes making
illusions of holes and at other times bulges. See:
Another artist that
works in situ is Gosia Wlodarczak. Her drawings operate as
both installation and performance. By drawing on glass sheets she is able to
trace elements seen through the glass, as well as add other more abstract elements
as she develops each image. She also interacts with chance encounters,
sometimes drawing birds that have
settled outside the windows, each view captured and then entrapped within other
views as she moves her drawing position and therefore her viewpoint. You can
get an idea of how she works by taping up a clear sheet of acetate over a
window and drawing with marker pens over whatever view you can see and then
shifting your viewpoint and doing another drawing and so on. Olga Sankey describes the role of drawing in Wlodarczak’s art practice: “Drawing is looking rather than looking at; the object of drawing is not the representation of a particular environment, rather it is the documentation of being in the environment. The former suggests an automatic activity, like breathing, while the latter is a more considered, self-conscious activity.” See:
Clint Fulkerson
Gosia Wlodarczak
The window becomes a tracing screen, glass replacing the older grid of taut thread. Gosia Wlodarczak's work points out how important it was to keep the eye point in one place in those old drawing frames, she of course celebrating the confusion of overlapping viewpoints if you do move eye point. Duchamp was obviously thinking of these things when he made 'To be looked at with one eye close to…'
She also has videos made of her performances, working with other artists so that she has well crafted documentations of her actions. See:
Yulia Pinkusevich
You could compare Pinkusevich's work to Matthew Barney's Drawing Restraint 14.
Matthew Barney
Paul Morrison
Susie Macmurray works using a wide range of materials, but drawing still remains central to her practice. Have a look at her hairnet drawings, where she works directly in response to the possibilities of delicate lines made by manipulating an old hairnet. This sensitivity to materials comes through in her wall drawings, dots and lines being made by wax and horse hair rather than traditional drawing materials. See:
Susie Macmurray
Irene van de Mheen has
a more conceptual approach. She responds to what is already there and develops
a series of strategies to reflect upon how the wall was used previously. In
this case she has drawn around the existing pictures that were on the wall and
these drawings become the starting point for a meditation upon possibilities of
how to present a series of rectangles of different sizes. See:
You can find a wide
range of artists making drawings in situ here. As you will see there are a wide
variety of approaches to working on a large scale, whether you are text based
or image based, an abstractionist or a performance artist, working in situ can
be liberating.
Irene van de Mheen
Fiona Banner
See also:
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