Foxy Production’s summer group exhibition, THE PENCIL SHOW, spotlights the graphite pencil that – as a tool of line, texture, and form – can conjure the marvelous and magical within the confines of a plain sheet of paper. From the doodle to the cartoon to the sketch, the marriage of pencil and paper has often been the mind map of the masterpiece. The exhibition illuminates drawing’s play with both the whimsical and the profound within the configuration of its monochrome marks.
With modest means the works in The Pencil Show engage promiscuous methods and ideas: they range from the baroque to the minimal, the polished to the raw, the graceful to the aggressive, the photorealist to the abstract. The uncensored, unfiltered nature of the doodle carries through into the content of many of the works: they can elicit a polymorphous perversity that is, at times, fanciful, dark, and lascivious. Text plays a vital role in a number of works: it can be both an integral visual element as well as a potent poetic meditation that seems to spring from fissures in the subconscious.
The drawing can involve an instinctive, gestational process, where concepts can refract, crystallize, or become productively detoured, and where compositions stretch from purposefully smudged and dissolving forms to symmetrical, almost mathematical patterning. Through its intimate relationship with its materials and its inherently reflexive nature, drawing invites the viewer into prescribed and seemingly private spaces where lines and fields are rubbed, etched and shaded into allusive and charged psychic landscapes.
The Pencil Show creates a dialog among a range of artists, working with diverse methods and concerns and in varying stages of their careers. It includes works by: D-L Alvarez, Jarrod Anderson, Hany Armanious, Daniel Barrow, Guy Benfield, Sascha Braunig, Ellen Cantor, Olga Chernysheva, Rob Churm, Kate Davis, Louise Despont, Dick Evans, Dan Fischer, Robert Gober, Tomoo Gokita, Violet Hopkins, Charles Kanwischer, Rob McKenzie, Keith Mayerson, Jimmy Robert, Sterling Ruby, Michael Sanchez, Matt Savitsky, Travess Smalley, Team Macho, Jeffrey Tranchell, Kon Trubkovich, Hannah van Bart, and Roger White.
Foxy Production would like to thank the artists for their participation and the following galleries for their invaluable help in facilitating the exhibition: ATM Gallery, New York; Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York; John Connelly Presents, New York; Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow; Derek Eller Gallery, New York; Matthew Marks Gallery, New York; Shaheen Modern & Contemporary Art, Cleveland; and Rachel Uffner Gallery, New York.
Credits
Coordinated by Ebony L. Haynes.
Installation photography by Mark Woods.