With its almost 300 artworks (by more than 100 artists), all of which either crowd lofty corners or spread out buffet-style along lengthy walls, the latest " Drawing Show " at the Boston Center for the Arts resembles nothing so much as a huge party: sprawling, effervescent, energetic. And " party " describes both the show’s strength and its weakness. It’s great fun, provided you’re in the mood.
The fun — keep in mind, mood is crucial — begins with the observation that there’s almost no drawing in the drawing show, at least not in any traditional sense of the word. So if you’re disposed to a rule-bending (albeit supremely rehearsed) exhibit, you’ll get a kick out of the video installation as drawing, the painted car hood as drawing, the huge wall-mounted wooden hand as drawing, and, strangest yet, the various gelatin silver prints, oils on postage stamps, circuit boards, collages, and digital reproductions, as well as masking tape, plaster, metal and latex, paper bag and thread, and machine-part confections — all as drawing. Of the hundreds of objects in the show, I counted about 30 that qualify as old-fashioned drawing, works that " simply " involve the application of charcoal or graphite or ink or crayon to an unembellished surface. Tradition’s good for about 10 percent.
As with virtually all oversized parties, the pretentious and unremunerative far outnumber the genuine and rewarding. If you’re looking to the BCA’s " Drawing Show " for sustaining works of art, the going quickly gets tough. On the other hand, it’s possible to regard the exhibit as a variation on trying to have a meaningful conversation in the vicinity of giant amplifiers: hard, but not impossible. Let me suggest a few places to stand where the art breaks through as intimate and convincing.
Take a right at the front door of the gallery to what the accompanying flyer calls " Salon Section — Wall B " and spend some time with Michael David’s 1998 ink-on-mylar creation Man Behind Shower Curtain. The ink itself is shaped and colored like water droplets on a glass shower door. On the other side, as it were, we make out a man. In the context of a show that includes unremitting and public bombast, David’s drawing stands out for its delicacy and sensuality and celebration of the quotidian. Not once do you think about where he went to art school, in part because his technique is impeccable: the droplets, all identically sized, darken and lighten according to the body’s topography. The piece delivers nuances of texture, depth, and even temperature in an astute yet self-effacing orchestration of shades of gray.
On " Wall C " of the Salon Section (go left at the front door) appear a number of delicate, methodical to the point of compulsive, yet ultimately passionate abstract works that manage to be heard despite the surrounding tumult. Masako Kamiya’s diminutive gouache on paper is made up of thousands of dots about the size of an " o " in the print you’re reading. The color range of Autumn spans red, orange, and brown, with the hues growing slightly lighter toward the bottom of the piece. The effect is gently kinetic and peculiarly natural. Although the dots are machine-perfect (they look like confetti from a hole punch), they’ve been enlisted to evoke the quiet revolution of seasonal change.
Almost directly below Autumn are two even smaller drawings, each about the size of a film still, by Adie Russell: 79 Lines Trying Not To Meet and 78 Lines Trying To Meet. Both works resemble thin wire cages, with the difference that the fine, vertical lines that drop down from above don’t quite meet their corresponding skinny stalagmites that rise from below. Lines Trying To Meet look a lot like Lines Trying Not To Meet; the only difference is that the latter’s lines shift right like a bent deck of playing cards seen from the side. It’s hard to say precisely what gives the pair their appeal, whether it is the human unevenness of the artist’s hand or the fact that she’s numbered, from 1 to 78 and from 1 to 79, the lower lines of each work in microscopic print, in the manner of a ruler or a legend. It’s as if Russell were reminding herself how far she’s gone, or as if there were merit or meaning or magic to the enumerations. Certainly part of the power here lies in the dialogue between the two frames, so the artist should be encouraged to regard them as not two works but one.
What could be more predictable than the same letter scrawled innumerable times in a small space with an oil stick? A speech by John Ashcroft, perhaps, but Jodie Manasevit has figured out how to repeat a cursive capital " D " and make its repetition interesting. It’s not just that no two of these letters are the same, and neither is it the jack-o’-lantern effect of the black letters fitted in the square yellow background. Manasevit’s Yellow #1D reads like a preserved slate from a 19th-century classroom. She’s not just playing with the form, she’s trying to master it, and in that effort she draws us into the personal past of our own penmanship.
The downside of the " 17th Annual Drawing Show " is that it so often falls short of festivity. Instead I felt as if I were in a receiving line, getting a quick handshake from some robotic dignitary. It’s always a bad sign when the notice for an exhibit, like the one for this year’s " Drawing Show, " highlights the curator and doesn’t mention a single artist. Such priorities suggest a story nobody wants to hear.
If the BCA’s " Drawing Show " resembles a loud party, then " Process on Paper, " a group show at the OH+T Gallery, which is also in the South End, qualifies as dinner with friends: conversational, personal, comparatively deep. What’s more, by " Drawing Show " standards, all the constituents of " Process on Paper " qualify as drawings, traditional ones at that.
Outstanding work in this meticulously mounted, carefully planned exhibit comes in the form of two ink drawings by Gregg Blasdel that in their own self-abnegating way prove breathtaking. Blasdel integrates mathematics with romance, insect wings with city grids, the cerebral with the sweeping, in two darkly abstract geometric creations. The effect is oddly hallucinatory, since his images reveal a subtle multiplicity of patterns: the dark swaths of ink appear within a lace-thin network of white edging. Further, within the outlined ink, the darkness itself has been structured, as you discover embedded, pitch-black geometric forms. The works read as part science experiment, part dressmaking for a monarch, exact and spirited.
" Process on Paper " also includes intriguing etchings by Elizabeth Marran that appear ghostly and voluptuous: curvaceous, abstract cutouts are dusted with graphite and then removed, so as to leave behind white reminders of their presence. Also: John O’Connor’s wall-sized drawing, which looks like a cross between a subway map and a circuit board; Patrick Strzelec’s ink drawings, which bridge simplicity and intelligence; and accomplished prints by Peik Larsen.
The OH+T Gallery now shares its space with the Clifford•Smith Gallery, so to see " Process on Paper " you have to pass Tracy Miller’s exhibit of paintings. Don’t pass, linger. Miller is a riotous, incendiary painter whose giant oils depicting unimaginable combinations of food at once inspire both gluttony and anorexia. Riveting and repulsive, Miller fixes her viewers in gastronomic headlights; she holds us between desire and nausea, cherry pie and mustard. It’s weirdly spectacular.
