2009
A New Method
The installation A New Method was part of the group exhibition Source Material that ran from May 14th until June 28th 2009 in TENT. Rotterdam.
The installation consists of seven new works, including overhead and slide projections, watercolours and works on paper. The starting point for it was a previously made series of copies of drawings from the book A New Method in Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape by the eigteenth century draughtsman and art teacher Alexander Cozens. He developed a technique to use ink blots to draw landscapes, because he thought this would help in overcoming the accidental shape with which nature usually shows itself, in order to reach more ideal forms. Ink blots and other change related drawing techniques are used since the fifteenth century. Artistic strategies in that respect do not necessarily change very much, what alters is how they are used.
Like the copies of Cozens’ landscapes that serve in their original context as a model of how to draw, other works in the installation are models as well. However, out of their context it becomes very ambiguous for what they are a model. The works are brought together using references to didactical strategies. For instance, overhead projections give a certain authority to an image and imply the transmitting of information. Another work contains an ABC, like the ones used in school to teach children how to write.
For a short review from Metropolis M please click here.