• Dragan Ilic and the Five Hundred Pencils – Nina Zivancevic and Leonard Abrams

    Date posted: June 9, 2006 Author: jolanta

    Dragan Ilic and the Five Hundred Pencils

    Nina Zivancevic and Leonard Abrams
     

    		  
    Dragan Ilic’s recent exhibition of drawings is the radical controversial artist’s first solo show since 1985, and it presents a set of unique approaches to the very idea of draftmanship. One work is a large-scale, many-lined, abstract drawing, resembling a radical musical score or the electric grid of a huge computer chip, and is made by a variety of "drawing devices" invented by the artist. Image 
    Says Ilic: "My basic
    interest and ongoing exploration as an artist has been the interaction between
    human creative imagination and machine-like robotic activity." The tools
    are assemblies of graphite or color pencils, pastels and brushes, which are
    parallel and symmetrically spaced in a direct line, in a sequence of two to
    five hundred pieces. Using a large sheet of paper placed on the ground, Ilic
    engages his entire body in the act of drawing with these implements. Ilic
    began to use these self-constructed tools in 1975, when he first made
    multiple-line drawings with handfuls of pencils. He is investigating with this
    work an optical creation in which the capacities of mathematics and the human
    intuitive knowledge are intermingled.

    Ilic’s fascinations thus reflect his always iconoclastic
    but never Luddite perspective on the role of science and technology in our
    lives; and the new show features significant interactive components. In the
    case of the artist’s grand 4′ x 14′ sculptural drawing device, constructed from
    a sheet of rubber that has been perforated with thousands of red graphite
    drawing pencils, the viewer is encouraged to handle the pulsating
    porcupine-like apparatus, and add his own drawing to the white walls that
    surround the piece. Last year, upon hearing of the devastation and shortage of
    educational materials in East Timor, Ilic gave fifty thousand of his drawing
    pencils to the children in that newly independent state. This act was in
    keeping with his work in the grand tradition of the artist as visionary. For
    Ilic, the most important thing is for people to glimpse the future– one that he
    will no doubt take part in shaping.

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