"Drawn Together" Showcases Contemporary Works on Paper

Jane Lombard Gallery is pleased to present Drawn Together, a group exhibition of works on paper. Featuring artworks by Jane Bustin, Squeak Carnwath, Sarah Dwyer, Richard Ibghy & Marilou Lemmens, Teppei Kaneuji, T.J. Dedeaux-Norris, Lucy & Jorge Orta, Enrico Isamu Oyama, Dan Perjovschi, Lucas Reiner, Stefan Saffer, Elizabeth Schwaiger, Howard Smith, and Courtney Tramposh, this exhibition highlights the relationship between artist, medium and surface, and the marks made in the process.

Every artist has a unique relationship with surface, especially when it comes to the most humble and universal of mark-making chassis: paper. In our daily lives, one’s experience with paper is often temporary - taking the form of convenient throwaways like napkins, newspapers, cups and containers. As a medium for art, paper’s versatility can position itself as an archival surface, or a more intimate, liminal space - a vehicle through which to experience transition and absence. Paper, in all its forms, is a place for ideation; a site for transmission: of voices, concepts, stories, histories, futures, daydreams, nightmares, and evolving narratives.

The artists in Drawn Together use the medium in vastly different ways. Lucas Reiner’s series New York Sidewalk Drawings observe and interpret the stained surface of the sidewalks, resulting from the build-up of spills dispersed by pedestrians, bicyclists, and the effects of time. T.J. Dedeaux-Norris’s handmade papers act as a site for grief work - reclaimed surfaces made from a mixture of her late Mother's insurance, hospital papers, estate paperwork and bits of the artist’s hair. Sarah Dwyer creates playful experiments in form through reworking subject matter and material. Stefan Saffer creates intricate abstract compositions from single sheets of painted, cut paper, carving out space for the viewer that resists repetition. Enrico Isamu Oyama’s dynamic “quick turn structures” create sharp facet-like surfaces of three-dimensional depth, entangled in delicate floral drawings on soft brown paper. Elizabeth Schwaiger’s whimsical paintings document warm spaces of abundance, creation and proliferation. Squeak Carnwath’s works observe, absorb and interpret the world around her. Howard Smith uses the surface as an extension of his abstract painting practice through delicate experiments in application, material and color.

Despite their differences in approach, each artist has in common the use of paper as a mechanism for intimate experience. Whether in the form of words, lines, shapes, splatters or sprays, marks exist as echoes of collision points, traces of response, artifacts of substance, form, volume and surface. They embody the applied energy of their maker through gestural changes of rhythm, and help communicate emotion through visual sequence in an intimate way.