walking as I stand
Carrie Secrist Gallery
Chicago, Illinois
September - October 2017
every line is a choice
and every choice, a risk
every risk is a pilgrimage
and every pilgrimage, a night
every night is a map
and every map, a distance crossed
every distance crossed, a falling
and every fall, an airborne note
poem by Ginny Threefoot
excerpted from Unmeasured, 2017
Anne Lindberg’s six new monumental drawings embody the seamless relationship between the pace of her step and the evolution of the drawing. Citing a long tradition ranging from Henri Rousseau to William Wordsworth, Robert Walser and Immanuel Kant, the work in this exhibition expounds the relationship of deep thinking and composing with time spent walking. As thousands of lines are pulled across a pliant mat board while walking, an under-layer of graphite builds a matrix into which color is overlaid and embedded.
Lindberg’s work has a highly atmospheric inclination towards the rhythmic layers of luminous colors. By holding on to a gradient light, a slow and telling use of tone finds meaning. Essentially, this is the documentation of the sun in context, with all its various capacities, eliciting qualities ranging from the emotional to the tangential. These drawings present a visceral and metaphysical weight, which carries with it a quiet reserve, emotional power and formal abstraction. Here, Lindberg uncovers an alchemy that can exist in everyday life.
walking as I stand also features a functional 18-inch high, 50-foot long wooden sculpture placed in the gallery, literally and conceptually creating an axis from which to experience the drawings. The form, situated perpendicular to the vertical lines that compose the drawings, is a nod towards the architectural influence prevalent in the work while also affecting a corporeal experience for the visitor. Bisecting the space longitudinally, the form at once encourages walking (along, around, over) and contemplating (sitting). This physical line creates a real time somatic moment where the visitor becomes the axes fulcrum – somewhere between 2 and 3 dimensions.
Lindberg understands her studio practice as a paced and daily conversation with place, in body and mind. From her studio in the Hudson River Valley, elements of light, space, and time coalesce from this mindset. As these drawings generate fundamental questions about time, causality and sequence, language is utilized as a compass to conjure meaning. The titles of the new work are fragments of language, lines of published poetry or essay from writers with whom Lindberg finds connection and alliance.
Cumulatively, walking as I stand presents an experience that conjoins personal and abstract voices with a new sense of profundity. Here, from a deep place within herself, Lindberg speaks in an essential way to the human condition.
EVENT:
Anne Lindberg + David J. Lewis: under and over drawing, a conversation
September 16, 2017, 5:00 – 6:00PM
In collaboration with the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial, there will be a special presentation at the gallery featuring Anne Lindberg in conversation with architect David J. Lewis. This interactive conversation will explore drawing as a creative form in both architecture and studio art. Exploring the complexities of this medium as a means for creativity, questions asked may include: How does drawing encourage unique thinking? What is the relationship between process and interpretation at the intersection of visual art and architecture? What are the similarities and differences between drawing within the discourse of art versus the production of architecture? And, ultimately, what – and whose – narratives are revealed?
