Time was, drawing served mainly as the first draft of more elaborate works in paint or marble. Nowadays, it’s more a means of thinking aloud, in the form of text, storyboards or documentation. It serves video, performance and installation artists—and sometimes even sculptors, as Lesley Heller’s current show reminds us.
Untitled #3 (2008) by James O. Clark, at Lesley Heller Gallery’s Sculptors Draw.
Sculptors Draw brings together more than 20 drawings by six contemporary artists with very divergent approaches. A 1968 piece by Forrest Myers—best known for his grid of I-beams adorning a building at Houston and Broadway—comprises a sketch and business letters documenting his proposal to bounce a laser beam across the city. James Clark’s loosely scribbled abstractions (2008) show little connection to his idiosyncratic constructions of electric lights and found objects—until one turns down the gallery lights, that is, and their phosphorescent pigments glow. A series of six drawings from 1975 by the late conceptual/minimalist artist Sol Lewitt defines and fulfills its own processes: each sheet has been folded and cut according to the instructions inscribed on it.
Tom Doyle, the most traditional and romantic sculptor here, is represented by three preparatory sketches (2009) for dynamic, three-legged sculptures. The subtly graded tones of Ruth Hardinger’s abstract charcoal drawings (2009) suggest the heavy masses of her concrete sculptures—an effect enhanced by the three-dimensional creases in their paper surfaces. And especially intriguing is Judy Pfaff’s four-foot-square collage (2009), which envelopes the viewer every bit as much her huge, elegantly rambunctious installations. Protruding two inches, her yellow, brown and silver blossoms and seaweed-like forms become a delicious mix of the delicate and the obtuse, the fresh and the withered.
Also on view are several of Sharon Lawless’ woodcuts and surrealistic collages of organic and mechanistic forms. In the gallery’s garden, Mr. Clark’s humorous installation of found industrial objects emits bubbles, mist, and doo-wop songs; during the reception, several live, hand-dyed chickens pranced about, armed with miniature video-cams.
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Sculptors Draw at Lesley Heller, through Aug. 21. 16 E. 77th St. (betw. 5th & Madison Aves.), 212-410-6120.
