by Kevin Freitas
If drawing’s origins can be traced back to the Italian Renaissance and the Academies - its usage primarily as a means to an end - that is, as a form of visual note taking or sketch in preparation for the final work of art, it isn’t until the 18th century that it begins to acquire a certain autonomy and appreciation. Drawing materials and the techniques used in employing them haven’t changed much over the centuries either, case in point, ink drawings or sumi-e has been around since the 10th century in Japan and even earlier in China. Today, it is still one of the many methods artists use to make their art. If there is any thanks to be given for drawings continued success and general public appeal, we should remove our porkpie hats (Llewellyn sports them) and thank such great masters as Rembrandt, Poussin, Rubens, Boucher, Fragonard, Delacroix, Cezanne, Degas, ad nauseam… Drawing has a very fine pedigree that carries a lot of art historical weight: tons and tons of it.
Renaissance artists viewed drawing as a cosa mentale, something that originated in the spirit and mind and then manifested itself through its gesture. Drawing then, was both mental and physical. It may have taken a major exhibit in 1976 organized by Bernice Rose entitled “Drawing Now” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to realize drawing could be something else than just lines on a piece of paper. It could also encompass such radical artists (at the time) as Land Art aficionados Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer, and still others from Dine to Agnes Martin to Stella, Twombly, and Rauschenberg. And how about now, where does drawing stand in 2009? The answer might be found in several new works by long time San Diego artist and resident Clayton Llewellyn, currently on view at Device Gallery (Barrio Logan).
]]>
Some of the works at Device were exhibited earlier this year in May at the Earl and Birdie Taylor Library in PB. A show Robert Pincus from the Union-Tribune reviewed, and from all accounts, rather enjoyed. Llewellyn still managed to make new work for this solo show – his second – that fills the somewhat cramped quarters of Device Gallery’s interior gallery and is nicely accompanied by a series of drawings (diptychs and triptychs) that line the gallery’s exterior walls. If you’ve never visited the gallery, it is contained in a larger warehouse structure that also houses artist/design studio spaces where at any given moment, one can hear the sounds of grinding metal and blow-torches. I find the space to be quite clean and functional; I’ve heard others say it resembles a food court for art. I think it depends on whether or not the work exposed can hold its own amongst all the sights & sounds of the space.
Llewellyn’s work holds up rather well. The title of the show Ftagn (waits dreaming) is a direct reference to H.P. Lovecraft’s story or mythos of a shared universe (one in which many writers contribute to the same fictional universe by “sharing characters and other elements”) that is inhabited by “ancient, powerful deities who came from outer space and once ruled the Earth,” one of which was Cthulhu. In the story, Cthulhu “lies ‘dead [but] dreaming’ in the submerged city of R'lyeh somewhere in the Southeast Pacific Ocean.” It is believed that some day when the moment is favorable, Cthulhu will rise once again to “wreak havoc on the earth.”
It is an apt mythology that seems to help explain “the waiting” one feels when looking at Llewellyn’s work. It is the type of anxiety and frustration that comes from looking at drawings that are still, unmoving, airless and frozen yet incredibly masterful and rich in their technique. The artist’s attention and deft drawing hands have succumbed to simply rendering the spoils of a post-industrial society that has been abandoned, shut down, turned-off, and is now silent. The drawings are starkly immutable (I don’t mean this negatively, they are rather lifeless) in their matter-of-factness, minimal in their compositions of old steam pipes, gears, levers, pumps and the like. They have been intentionally cropped compositionally or literally sectioned by the paper’s edge or frame – this is successful in varying degrees. What it does accomplish though, is that they become specimens, a record of a glorious period, trapped like insects in the amber of an industrial age that once was, but now find themselves like Cthulhu waiting and dreaming.
Synchronicity II, 2009 (detail, middle panel)
There are several works in the exhibit that are less dense, the graphite strokes of the pencil no longer emboldened. Instead, the lines are softer, poetic, and light, fanciful to a degree and remind me of the strangely curious creatures found in the film Coraline. They appear to integrate better within their colored ink washed backgrounds, floating effortlessly through the pictorial space delicately and purposefully. In the drawings Evolutional whimsy II and Charlotte Told Us We Grow Apart is where we sense an afterlife, even hope or a purpose, as large white molars have been fastened to makeshift parachutes from cloth, cast-off into the wind like a bottle tossed into the sea. But Cthulhu is never far away alas, he grows stronger everyday as evidenced in works like Synchronicity II, Intellect Alone is a Dry and Rattling Thing, or even Pandora’s Gift where hair seems to sprout from rusted pipes, bubbles escape from the ocean floor, and veins (or roots) surround and suffocate a discarded pump bringing nutrients to a restless soul.
In the end, Ftagn (waits dreaming) would have been a perfect show if not for the extrapolation and dreaming one needs to do while viewing the work. I’ve gone to great lengths to embellish and play off of the theme and inspirations for this show in my review. Dreaming or imagining while looking at art is a good thing, contemplation is healthy and necessary, but only if the work can carry you to a point (offer clues) which can allow you to set your mind free. It’s a matter of trusting and having confidence in the artwork before you, something only it can offer. For Llewellyn, I think it is a much simpler problem.
He is a confident and competent drawer; in this I have no doubts. I believe Llewellyn is at his best in a work like Reconfigured Nuclear Ideal : light bulbs and old-fashioned radio and TV vacuum tubes have replaced what could very well be the udders of a cow. He is at his most fluid when the subject matter does not become totally complacent, a victim of a drawing exercise that is a metaphor, a stand-in of a generic object (a vessel) that means one thing and is supposed to represent something else. I am unable to get overly worked up over industrial waste, garden hoses, and electrical cords disconnected. There are many ways to express loss, grief, loneliness, and abandonment, the over-use of generic icons could hamper these emotions coming forth by pushing the artist and his feelings behind the image. Llewellyn is better when he is breezy and airy, his line, shadows and chiaroscuro-esque rendering comes forward and breathes life into his drawings when they are not suppressed by the over-powering and sometimes decorative backgrounds that squash their delicateness. The bold rich ink washes of the foreground (while beautiful) do not always add something and only ends up distracting the viewer. A less stylish and more direct approach could give Llewellyn the same amount of challenges he’s after, with a much richer payoff.
In 1607, Federico Zuccari contributed to the many theories of art that have preceded his own Idea of the Sculptors, Painters, and Architects by elevating “drawing to a metaphysical activity with its origin in the mind of God.”(1) Llewellyn’s metaphysical activity certainly resides in a corner of his artistic mind and is perhaps, lying in a hallway between two open doors. Then again, he just might be one step closer to a long progression of steps towards a divine and definitive world of imagery. In the meantime, Llewellyn (waits dreaming). I’m glad I made the effort to pass through the doorway; I think you might be too.
click for larger image
(1) Rose, Bernice, "Drawing Now." The Museum of Modern Art New York, catalog printed by Colorcraft Lithographers, Inc., 1976, p.9.
]]>
