The drawings of Nancy Rubins at the Gagosian

Nancy Rubins: Graphite on paper

There is an exhibition of Nancy Rubins’ work at the Gagosian gallery in Britannia Street, London at the moment. It’s on until April the 14^th, so if you are travelling down to London by train go and see it, as Britannia Street is very close to Kings Cross station.

Although this is an exhibition of both her sculpture and drawings, I was particularly interested in the two very large drawings Rubins had on exhibition (Above). These drawings were essentially about the illusion of weight. I have seen some very good Richard Serra exhibitions in the same gallery and Rubins’ drawings reminded me of Serra’s interest in iron and how heavy it can be, however these particular drawings were I thought, much more to do with the old tradition of trompe d’oeil. Rubins works in graphite on paper, and like Anna Barriball builds up dense textures by pushing graphite into the paper surface. However there is a big difference in how she is developing this surface. 

Detail

Rubins tears and re-joins her paper, she has also attached tape and pulled it back off so that areas of rough texture can be developed. I suspect she sands the paper surface as well. As you scan the drawings you can see subtle changes in the way light reflects off differences in texture, as the gallery lights pick up the various changes in direction her hands must have taken as she pushed the graphite across the surface. There have been many hours spent building up a surface of this intensity, these drawings in many ways being a document to Rubins’ labours. 

Detail

The paper itself is a thick, heavy weight and a not hot pressed one; a hand made paper that collects graphite powder in the pocks and holes in its surface, thus preventing the sheen that Barriball gets when she rubs her graphite into a paper surface. The density of the material Rubins ends up with means that these sheets of paper look like lead and on first glance could be mistaken for wall mounted sculptures. On second glance you can see that these ‘sculptures’ are held onto the walls simply by using metal headed push pins. 

Detail

If you bend down and look behind the areas that bend away from the wall you can see that this work is a product of the material properties of paper, the untreated backs of the paper sheets revealing the true nature of the work.

Paper can be folded, creased, torn, ripped, bent into curves, pinned to walls, it can be made to crack as it is bent or folded, and is easily overlapped and layered. Rubins takes full advantage of the fact that this heavy looking material is in fact paper light and she is obviously enjoying the freedom of compositional variation that these building methods give her.

Finally we are left with the associations these ‘leaden’ looking surfaces suggest. From the giving of monumentality to the simple graphite pencil mark, via thoughts about lead sheeting, the look of Anslem Keifers’ books and aeroplanes, via the look of broken armour, to memories of 1950s and 60s lead lined atomic shelters. There is though also something about drapery as well, folded and draped materials having a long history of Classical associations in Western history of art. Perhaps above all I was interested in Rubins’ drawings because they were just graphite on paper, something that she would have probably done when she made her very first drawings as a child, and what she does is show us what the potential is when you just push an activity to its logical conclusion. 

See also these earlier posts.

Graphite

Theimprint and the trace (This post also introduces Anna Barriball’s graphite work)