New Urban Cultures: Nulla Dies Sine Linea Exhibition of Spanish Contemporary Drawing

“Nulla dies sine linea. “No day without a line“
Quote attributed to Pliny the Elder, Roman writer 23-79 B.C.

Pliny used to explain the story of Apelles of Colofon, the official painter of Alejandro Magno.  He had the systematic habit of practicing his art every single day by drawing at least one line.  One of the lines Apelles drew was so thin that nobody else was able to reproduce it.

Is there anything in art so elemental and at the same time as powerful as a simple line?  That hand that holds the pencil... that pencil that trails over the white paper... the paper that now keeps a trace of a mark where there was nothing before.  Drawing is the visible track of a mental seismograph which remains permanently active and alive.

This project aims to construct a shared experience from an optimistic fantasy:  Rescuing drawing from its standing as a pariah within a family of theoretically more serious and prestigious disciplines.  It is an invitation to re-discover perhaps the most fundamental and mysterious artistic medium.

This exhibit presents the drawings of 23 artists from various parts of Spain.  These artists approach their work from different backgrounds and distinctive ways of understanding the medium, using the simplest and rudimentary techniques to the latest technologies.  Among them:
Pencil on paper:   Sofía Jack, Sito Mújica, Óscar Seco, José Luís Serzo Domingo Sánchez Blanco.

Digital printing:   Marina Núñez, Enrique Radigales, Daniel Silvo.
Geometric abstraction, simple abstraction and pure line:  Ruth Quirce, Abraham Lacalle, Imanol Marrodán.

Video-drawing hybridism:  Juan Zamora.

Landscape drawing: Santiago Talavera o Jesús Zurita.

Geographic conceptual drawing:   Lola Marazuela and Paco Mesa.

Figurative drawing:  PSJM.
Together, these artists give us a profound sense of the heterogeneity of current Spanish drawing.  Perhaps in the future we will witness the regeneration of drawing as an autonomous discipline.  After all, the line is the base, the origin, the frame behind the visual experience.
Picasso once put his finger on a figure drawn by his fellow artist, Miguel Angel, on the Sistine Chapel.  After trailing the delicate outline of the body with his finger, he was reported to say: “What a pleasure to follow this line!”
Artists of all times have been fascinated by drawing and have been wise enough to grant the line the respect it deserves.  Kandinsky argued that a point is the beginning and a line is the infinite.  Let’s explore this rich aesthetic attitude.  Let’s not spend another single day without a line or, failing that, let’s spend at least one day discovering its infinite treasures.

This exhibition was curated by Blanca Soto and will run from May 18, 2011 to July 6, 2011. For more information, please visit http://chicago.cervantes.es