200 Drawings

200 Drawings was a collaborative project between artist, Nikolai Noel and myself. For five days, we religiously visited the Alice Yard Space gallery for hours at a time. Here we repetitiously drew each other, confined to the box of the gallery space and a strict heap of 9x9’ white cartridge paper. Our medium ranged from charcoal and pencil to paint and pastels.

On the night of the opening we concluded with a performance. We continued drawing live, the glass door to the gallery box sealed and our audience peering in on us at a comfortable distance. Our performance ended as we completed 200 drawings.

This exercise was about limitations, budgetary limitations as well as that of time and space in which to conceptualize and execute a viable project. These very limitations helped us to focus on the actual process. Restrictions were imposed on time, subject, paper size, workspace, and the quantity of drawings. The title 200 drawings imply limitation as well as ambition and opportunity.

This is an exercise in which the participants constantly exchange feminine and masculine positions and perspectives. The observed/ surveyed becomes the observer/surveyor. During this act of drawing the artist makes constant and varying judgments about their subject through observation. In this situation the artist is simultaneously aware that these judgments are being about them.

"The project is a kind of exercise in looking ... a level of engagement and observation without direct interaction. This is apart from the obvious exercise in concentration, imagination, and execution involved.... ” -

Nikolai