The Potentiality of Drawing
MOT – Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Tokyo
June 02 – June 21, 2020

This exhibition endeavors to re-examine drawing’s potential in a number of different contexts through expression, varied in kind, that employs line as a core medium of exploration. Featured are works that demonstrate contemporary approaches to drawing.

Hand drawing, contrary to expectation, has gained in significance today, when digital technology is all around us; not as a study for the preparation of a finished piece but as a raw expression of the continual process of change that people and society are in. This exhibition views handwritten words as well as visual images as drawing and explores the relationship between them. Drawing on paper is an act that clearly records the drawer’s developing thoughts as they waver and sometimes break off or else take flight.

This exhibition, however, looks at drawing not only as a composition of lines on a flat surface but also with a view to lines that cut into their support and lines composed in three-dimensional space. The exhibition, then, furthermore looks at ‘visions’ of flowing water, seen in the imagination, as a subject for drawing – a motif that holds a powerful attraction for artists. In our increasingly complex contemporary society, drawing – the simplest and most fundamental expression of art – remains a source of endless possibilities.

The interplay of words and visual images is among the most essential topics of visual art today. Under the keyword of drawing, this exhibition will reconsider the relationship between words and images in visual expression, and what lies between them. The work of painters and sculptors begins with an eye to the space around them. What the eye sees find development in a drawing and, eventually, in a finished work capturing the space. This section considers the meaning of drawing as a core element of the production process and a work’s composition.

Drawing, a means of instantly rendering the imagination visible, has been integral to many artists’ production process. Visions of ceaselessly moving, changing water, seen in the imagination, particularly fascinate artists as a subject of line-based expression.

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