Susan Morris | Motion Capture – Gallery Information

HOME PAGE
MOTION CAPTURE: DRAWING AND THE MOVING IMAGE SELECTED WORK
Curated by Ed Krčma and Matt Packer SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork PUBLICATIONS
27th July – 4th November, 2012 RESOURCES/LINKS
AND
CV ETC.
Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland
PhD
22 January – 10 March, 2013
CONTACT
IN PROGRESS
IMAGES INSTALLATION SHOTS GALLERY INFORMATION PRESS ESSAYS STATEMENT

MOTION CAPTURE: DRAWING AND THE MOVING IMAGE

Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork

Curated by Ed Krčma and Matt Packer

Artists: Pierre Bismuth, Tacita Dean, Brian Fay, Tom Hackney, William Kentridge, Alice Maher, Henri Matisse, Henri Michaux,
Susan Morris, Ailbhe Ni Bhriain, and Denis Oppenheim.

Motion Capture… is an exhibition that explores the relationship between drawing and the moving image, examining the way
in which each one involves both movement and stillness. The exhibition presents works on paper alongside investigations of
drawing in other media, including film, video and photography.

The language of film and the cinema was adopted in the mid-20th century by such celebrated artists as Henri Matisse and
Henri Michaux to describe their drawing practice. The contemporary artists in Motion Capture make contact with these earlier
moments and reveal the ability of drawing to capture and articulate movement.

A 183p fully illustrated catalogue is available, featuring texts by participating artists and essays by Ed Krcma, Matt Packer
and Chris Clarke.

(ISBN 978-1-906642-56-3)

http://www.glucksman.org/motioncapture.html

SYMPOSIUM DETAILS

GALLERY WALL TEXTS (Ed Krčma)

Cinematic Drawing

What we think of as drawing is determined by what we define it against: our idea of drawing will be different depending on
whether we compare it with, for example, painting, writing, sculpture, photography or dance. What does drawing look like
when compared with film? Crucially, this comparison draws attention to the play of movement and stasis within both forms.

Film is composed of a linear sequence of discrete photographic stills. The celluloid filmstrip is passed through the projector to
give an illusion of movement, allowing the eye to fill in the tiny gaps between frames. Each frame constitutes an imprint of a

http://susanmorris.com/motion-capture-gallery-information/[11/09/2019 08:56:47]
Susan Morris | Motion Capture – Gallery Information
moment in time, the camera registering the fall of light across its surface in an immediate and involuntary way.

Drawings, too, are composed of a series of imprints, capturing the work of the artist’s hand. The image is the result of a
combination of traces inscribed onto a single surface, each one the record of an act now past. The finished drawing may be
literally still but, importantly, our looking involves movement. Both the eye and the mind of the viewer are constantly in
motion: following the trajectory of the line, clothing it with an imaginary texture, and animating the image with our own
internal equipment for projection.

The Rain of the Brush

In a 1946 documentary film, an elderly Henri Matisse is shown at work in his studio. The film includes a celebrated sequence
of slow motion footage which reveals the strange wanderings of the artist’s hand before it ever places a mark. In the 1960s,
the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan described these weird involuntary movements as ‘the rain of the brush’.  Lacan was
interested in bodily gestures that escape our systems of conscious intention, and that make contact with the spontaneous life
of animals: ‘If a bird were to paint would it not be by letting fall its feathers…?’ In the 1920s, under the influence of the
revolutionary ideas of Sigmund Freud, the Surrealists had devised various ‘automatic’ drawing strategies, whereby they tried
to bypass the conscious mind to enable the uncensored presentation of unconscious material. The hand would not follow the
dictates of the eye or the ego, but would set down the traces of illicit drives and repressed traumas usually silenced in waking
life. The idea of automatism has been of persistent concern to 20th century artists, with the mystery of the meaning and
origins of the body’s involuntary movements remaining a compelling site for investigation. From what clouds does it fall, this
rain of the brush?

Analogue and Digital

How has the arrival of digital technology affected our conception of drawing? Can we now speak of ‘manual’ drawing as
‘analogue’ in opposition to the kinds of drawings made with a computer tablet and stylus, for example? While digital media
have dominated technical and industrial drawing practices for at least two decades now, drawings made using digital means
have struggled to gain recognition in an art context. One reason for this might be that digital media do not have the same
relationship to the trace; ‘analogue’ photographs and drawings are imprints – of light or of manual pressure – and therefore
bear a direct connection to their object. One of drawing’s seductions has long been its privileged relationship to the artist’s
hand – and, by extension, to his or her creative imagination, inner feeling and thought process. Digital media, on the other
hand, translate signals into a vast sequence of zeros and ones, which can then be reconstituted into various output formats;
image files, text files, sound files, etc. They no longer share that direct relationship to physical objects and processes.
Indeed, one potentially alarming property of digital information is its capacity to be instantaneously removed from view.
Erasure, however, is not deletion: it is partial, it requires effort, and it leaves a trace. It provides a language for loss.

Diagram and Rebus

Much modern and contemporary drawing is both language-like and enigmatic. Resembling a strange hieroglyph, a drawing
will invite our deciphering, and yet its material, gestural and aesthetic qualities can never be fully assimilated into language
proper. Like a diagram or a rebus, drawing wavers between being a vehicle for communication and a mute, visual, graphic
figure. A pattern of involuntary bodily movements can, when traced in a drawing, come to resemble an alphabetical
character. An abstract picture, having seemingly abandoned any reference to the world, can in fact contain a very high
concentration of symbolic material. Groups of marks – gathered together, seemingly by chance – can take on, by the
strength of their formal organization, a sense of purposefulness and significance. Drawing’s proximity to writing and its
innumerable uses beyond the realm of art – in scientific classification, cartography, industrial design, and architecture –
enables it to reveal the tension between meaning and nonsense with particular precision. There is no key that solves all the
puzzles that works of art pose; and part of art’s significance is precisely not to be explained away in these terms.

http://susanmorris.com/motion-capture-gallery-information/[11/09/2019 08:56:47]
Susan Morris | Motion Capture – Gallery Information
 

http://susanmorris.com/motion-capture-gallery-information/[11/09/2019 08:56:47]