nulla dies sine linea
An ongoing project: Every day of the year a blind-drawing is created.
As an example it can be referred to the exhibition “Nicht will ich, Die Bilder dir stürmen”:
PDF file (2,4 MB)
Review
Bonner General-Anzeiger: Saturday / Sunday 28 Feb. / 1 March 2009
The Supreme Discipline of Art
Michaelangelo and Menzel took it to heart, and if we are to believe what has come down to us via Pliny, the painter in Antiquity, Apelles, was supposedly the first person to state it in words: “Nulla dies sine linea”, the demand that “No day should pass without drawing”. This was not only for reasons of enforcing practice, but might also be interpreted as an indication of the position drawing held as the supreme discipline of art. Bonn artist Christoph Loos has now joined the ranks of the guild of dedicated drawers with an ambitious project. Day for day he draws a picture – with closed eyes (and ears).
The results may be admired at the Kunstkabinett Martin Hennig in an exhibition called “It is not I who wants to, the pictures take you by storm”. What we see spread out over several levels at the gallery are dozens of “blind drawings” (drawing without looking), in which the spectrum ranges from an almost analytically probing exploration of the format along the edge or the diagonal to the courageous, emotional placement. The drawn “diary” displays rather playful or lighthearted phases and those characterized by thick strokes and powerful gestures.
To surmise mood changes or concrete emotions from this would certainly be going too far – Loos definitely keeps a clear head when he works, striving to develop a grammar of drawing. In doing this, he also introduces simple figures and signs into the work, creates structuring elements, and causes organic forms to come about, although he mainly operates on an abstract, ambiguous level.
The exhibition at the Kunstkabinett presents a possibility to discover a new facet of the drawer, painter, sculptor and Thuar-Prizewinner, last presented in Bonn in 2006 with his “Nanna Paradox” at the Rheinisches Landesmuseum and most recently active at the international level as a guest lecturer at Yale University (USA), the Arts Institute at Bournemouth (England) and at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan.
Thomas Kliemann
Kunstkabinett Hans Martin Hennig, Argelanderstraße 79 (back annex);
until April 4, Fridays and Saturdays 4 – 9 p.m.