Review of Anne Lindberg's raume yellow at Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, by Theresa Bembnister, The Drawing Center's news/blog, January 20, 2011


In Anne Lindberg's installation raume yellow, part of the three-person exhibition entitled Museum Interrupted at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas, the artist continues her ongoing examination of the distinction between drawing as a noun and drawing as a verb.

In the exhibition Apparently Invisible: Selections Spring 2009 at The Drawing Center, Lindberg exhibited drawings dedicated to that same investigation. In parallel 11 (plumbago), the artist covered a cotton board from edge to edge with painstakingly applied graphite lines—their tone and density varying depending on the pressure of the artist's hand. The drawing (verb) necessary to cover the surface of this drawing (noun) required physical exertion on Lindberg's part; the board measured 42 by 70 inches. The artist's mark-making is indexical, as the drawing documents Lindberg's process, recording the movements of her body.

Raume yellow also registers Lindberg's movements. To create the installation, she stretched Egyptian cotton thread across the width of the gallery, stapling it to either side of the wall, with the threads pulled taught. The result is a translucent wall of color with hues varying from white to goldenrod to yellow-green. Lines vibrate and pulsate, playing tricks on viewers' optical nerves. Stretched back and forth across the gallery space, the thread's configuration echoes the process of its installation. Here, drawing is again both an action and a thing—Lindberg draws lines in three-dimensional space using thread, and creates two-dimensional lines with cast shadows to fill the room with a drawing.

With raume yellow, Lindberg continues her use of thread as a medium. For old brain, a sculpture from 2005 exhibited at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City, she laid 650 pounds of silky gray thread in a 28-foot-long horizontal swath on the floor. With this heavy, glistening form Lindberg sought to give shape to humans' most basic understanding of our world, through concepts such as language, fear, anxiety, and gravity. In her statement for raume yellow, the artist reveals that the inspiration for her color choice was the poet Wallace Stevens' description of yellow as the first color. As with old brain, in raume yellow, Lindberg seems determined to connect with viewers on a primary level. Her installation toys with the viewers' vision and plays into their biological need for sunlight and warmth, enveloping them in a golden-yellow luminescence. – Theresa Bembnister, Contributor

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