17 Aug 2017

Drawing: The Beginning of Everything

Albright-Knox Art Gallery

Reviewed by Rob Mackenzie

Since 2010 Sol LeWitt's Wall Drawing #1268 has covered 2200 square feet of the Albright-Knox entrance hall, with 1717 pencil leads' worth of curlicued scribbles evoking architectural forms. But now the graphite, pastel, and ink drawing trail continues upstairs through five more rooms in what the gallery calls "a constructive exploration of surface, space, composition, and scale."

It can be hard to say where creativity ends and compulsion begins, in works the size of bedsheets, covered with miles of carbon. The more successful efforts draw viewers in from across the room to sample the exquisitely detailed, almost microscopic patterns from which both intimate images and entire worlds are made.

In Mark Fox's Untitled (Fault), stray and cast-off marks from the edges and discards of hundreds of other works have been meticulously circumscribed and collected in an abstract collage evoking the mystery, whimsy, and beauty of ink.