"Drawing Breath" by Sky Pape at June Kelly Gallery

Monday, 11 December 2006 08:34

New York City - An exhibition entitled Drawing Breath by Sky Pape — provocative drawings on paper that demonstrate once again the artist’s ability to push the boundaries of the medium — will open at the June Kelly Gallery, 591 Broadway, on December 15 and will remain on view through January 16, 2007.

Pape creates her drawings by an unconventional process -- blowing ink through a thin tube onto handmade paper from Japan and Nepal “In a sense,” Pape says, “I breathe life into these drawings, using my lungs to propel the ink.  But as much as they reflect my insides, implying arterial systems and biological forms, they also elicit a broader, innate recognition of the natural world – plants, creatures, coastlines, and rivers.  Growth and decay, beauty and brutality are the rudiments of this language.  These lines and forms divulge our connectedness with nature, a reminder of our shared fragility.”

For Pape, drawing is the core of any art, and her innovative approach displays both experimentation and expressiveness.  Pape employs the line as an isolated gesture with an almost independent presence.  She then integrates her lines and cutouts with an intuitive energy that references language – both abstract and minimal.

Pape admits to being fascinated with both the complex discipline of drawing and the handmade papers she uses.  “The idea of drawing with the paper instead of just upon it is characteristic of my approach to my materials,” she says.  She finds a formidable connection and meaning from working with the same creative materials that have been essential to our most ancient civilized societies.  She views her work as a collaboration with those distant paper-makers in Japan and Nepal.  Pape says that drawing is her most fluent expression, and that by using familiar materials like paper, ink and graphite in unconventional ways, she expands both her definition of drawing, and her growing vocabulary of this vital language.