I’ve been doing these long drawings on continuous computer paper, below is one I have stopped working on and above is one I’m just starting. They should really be horizontal, as a reference to the scrolls I saw at this exhibition of Chinese 17th/18th century artist Wang Hui’s work at the Metropolitan in NY which made me think a lot about space/landscape as a kind of temporal structure. At the time I had also just bought Brian Chippendale’s Maggots, which is maybe the opposite - breaking time into a million fragments (hemidemisemiquavers?).
Wang Hui’s scrolls felt like a primitive but highly honed film language with mountains used as travelling scenes between the set pieces in the cities. (The first road movie maybe?) They also made me very aware of the fluctuating connection between calligraphic marks and the structures they represent - undulating mountains made of thousands of very specific flicks of the brush-holding arm.
After sticking this up on the wall for a while I thought the form was a bit too arbitrary and I’ve now started to fill the paper - looks like I’ve got a long way to go…
