Exploring the Obsession
Miriam Kienle and Joelle Jensen
From contemporary art journals to recent drawing exhibitions, in "insider" and "outsider" contexts alike, there is a current affinity for obsessive drawing. Through the works of five international self-taught artists, the "Obsessive Drawing" exhibition, presently on view at the American Folk Art Museum, explores the aspects of society that provoke this obsession.
The works of the featured artists address facets of contemporary culture that can prove to be overwhelming on a day-to-day basis. Anxiety surrounding computer and consumer culture, systems of classification, environmental destruction or the sex industry pervade the exhibition. Several of the artists describe their process as a form of retreat and another describes it as a means of transcendence. As the title suggests, the drawings are obsessive and their makers can be categorized as compulsive. The curator, Brooke Davis Anderson, describes the artists’ use of drawing as a coping mechanism or a survival skill. This identification reveals a sincerity that could serve to separate these artists on display from the superstar-driven Chelsea art market. Certainly the words "sincerity," "obsession" and "coping mechanism" can describe the practices of academically trained artists and self-taught artists alike; however, these characteristics are less commonly celebrated (or at least, addressed with caution or buffered by irony) in the emerging artist showcases that set the stage in the commercial sphere.
Upon entering "Obsessive Drawing" the viewer is confronted with a monumental drawing of an apocalyptic orgy of transgender dominatrixes by Chris Hipkiss, entitled Lonely Europe Arm Yourself. As one scans the rest of the one-room exhibition, Hipkiss’ works appear radically different: they are narrative, representational and furthermore, the artist’s process feels degenerative rather than generative. Instead of retreating from the failures of contemporary culture, he embellishes and depicts the horror it inspires. In the ungrounded landscape of this thirty-five foot long, densely packed, epic drawing of phallic/vaginal buildings and androgynous figures, looking is complicated. Although the artist adheres to a birds-eye view, the scale and scroll-like quality of this swimming composition causes a feeling of instability and makes locating oneself in relation to the drawing difficult. One finds their bearings by focusing on the vignettes and poignant details amidst this pandemonium. Repeated are generators and power lines, smoke stacks, processions of scantly clad figures with sex toys and sardonic plays on words such as "Forever Fist"–riffing off of "Arm Yourself." The artist’s signature is yet another detail not to be overlooked. In the lower right hand quadrant is a barcode with "The Real Hip Kiss" written along the perimeter, commenting on consumer culture and artist as item.
Like Hipkiss, Charles Benefiel reacts to the mechanisms of numeric labeling rampant in contemporary society. Inspired by his frustration over our prevalent numerical codification, Benefiel creates what he refers to as a "dumb language." Each of Benefiel’s symbols is assigned a linguistic, numeric and phonetic code. The key to this code is printed in the wall text next to Random Numeric Repeater #9. The symbols are meticulously repeated in a linear pattern creating painting-scale drawings reminiscent of Minimalist Agnes Martin and Post-Minimalist Mel Bochner. Benefiel describes the piece as a response to the dehumanizing systems of identification, such as social security and tax ID numbers, that translate the value of the individual.
Benefiel is one of three artists in the exhibition united by rule-based, geometric composition. Eugene Andolsek and Martin Thompson, like Benefiel, cope with present-day anxieties through focused abstractions. Each artist attempts to control his environment by mentally retreating inward and tuning out the world around him. The wall text describes an aural experience integral to each artist’s process. Benefiel assigns basic sounds to each of his symbols making it possible to recite his drawings as musical compositions. Thompson murmurs his mathematical formulas as he generates his designs; Andolsek loses himself in the white noise of his radio playing in the background while creating visually rhythmic patterns.
Thompson’s monochrome diptychs of mirroring digitized designs on grid paper are plotted using a mathematical system based on multiples of ten. Reciting his equation like a song, he retains the complex sequence as he transfers it to the corresponding opposite image. When his calculation of DPI is off, he methodically removes a square from the margin and replaces the incorrectly colored one using an Exacto knife and tape. While Thompson’s compositions are made in isolation (solitary and self-alienating, as described by the artist), they are reminiscent of collectively created quilts or embroidery and also reference early computer technology, videogames and TV footage of the Gulf War. As the curator comments, "he struggles with the political and social realities of contemporary culture and uses his methodical art-making to create order in a chaotic world."
In the drawings of Eugene Andolsek, order is not what it appears to be. His hypnotic compositions, like Thompson’s, are laid out on grid paper but defy the grid. The colorful pattern is at first glance geometric and systematic, but upon closer inspection they are characterized by subtle inconsistencies that create a swirling rhythm. Throughout his life Andolsek, now eighty-years-old, could not escape his fear of slipping up at work and getting fired. The contained, colorful world of his compositions could be seen as a means of retreat into a place where inconsistency within the grid is permitted; although Andolsek’s artistic process appears to be more transcendent than regressive–the artist often wakes up from a trancelike state, radio humming and his compositions nearly complete.
Hiroyuki Doi, like the three aforementioned artists, limits himself to a singular shape–the circle. The artist creates fluid compositions that reference cosmographic maps or studies of biological forms likely to be found in a Petri dish. Doi allows the circles to germinate but, despite their density, resists the urge to fill the page from edge to edge. The forms hover in empty spaces, adding to their otherworldly presence. He, like Andolsek, describes his process in terms of transcendence and states, "something other than myself allowed me to make these works." It is his way of communing with the universe and connecting to society, which he represents with a sea of individual circles that compose his work. Although these works are meticulous and rely on repetition, there is an openness. They breathe. They are not mechanically driven. Doi expresses the importance of working with his hands in a world that tends to rely on communication through technological means. The resultant works simultaneously have physicality and an ethereal resonance.
Through the curator’s astute selection of artists working in the "horror vacui" tradition, she brings into focus issues that crowd our common consciousness. On a single sheet of paper each of these artists intensifies aspects of the human experience that we all cope with: "illness, loss, loneliness, fear and regret." Though their approaches are diverse, there is a common, compulsive thread. Like the five featured obsessionists, contemporary artists Paul Noble, Diana Cooper and James Siena, among others, process our current condition and navigate the information age through obsessive drawing, begging the question: what about contemporary culture ignites our obsession with the obsessive?
