ART-PRESENTATION: James Siena-Drawing

James Siena , Manifold VII (Detail), 2015 , Ink and watercolor on paper, 29.5 x 23.5 cm, © James Siena Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate, Courtesy of Pace GalleryJames Siena works across media exploring the range of possibilities that result when handmade or analog processes are executed with systematic constraints. He imposes rules, what he calls visual algorithms, on his practice, which produce concentrated and meticulously rendered abstractions. The artist refuses to constrain himself to one medium, producing engravings, etchings, paintings, lithographs, woodcuts, as well as drawings executed on typewriters and sculptures.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo:Pace Gallery Archive

James Siena in his solo exhibition “Drawing” at Pace Gallery in New York, presents three new series of drawings “Manifolds”, “Wanderers” and “Nihilisms”, these works offer distinct but interconnected approaches that extend Siena’s practices as a painter, sculptor and draftsman. The “Manifolds” drawings alternately merge and weave together abstract, spatially complex forms. Siena draws the series with ink, watercolor and graphite, as well as with an Electrographic pencil, which uses an artificial graphite originally developed by IBM for computerized test scoring and offers the artist a highly reflective medium similar to ink. These works play off his interest in topology, a branch of mathematics concerned with complex surfaces and the transformation of spatial forms. “Wanderers” challenge the boundaries of the page with intricate non-repetitive structures that migrate onto the mat and frame. They extend Siena’s drawing into a place between pictorial space and the outside world. They are in part inspired by essayist José Ortega y Gasset’s observation that “Instead of attracting attention to itself, the frame limits itself to concentrating attention and making it spill out onto the picture”. Siena was also inspired by the work of Frank Stella, “It was as a teenager that I first saw the lithographs of Frank Stella that he did at Gemini in 1970-72… in these new works, the Wanderers and Manifolds, displacement occurs as well, to varying degrees. I see these works as interrogating space at various levels; presentational, architectural and pictorial. But if I hadn’t seen those Stellas over forty years ago, these works wouldn’t have happened”. The “Nihilisms” contain texts that Siena develops through automatic writing, free association and reflection in contemporary scientific thought. Although not calligraphic in a conventional sense, he draws the words in this series as much as writes them, in some cases surrounding them with intricately hatched textures to create a kind of abstract illuminated manuscript.

Info: Pace Gallery, 537 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 12/1-11/2/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com

James Siena, Rulebreaker, 2016 , Ink on paper and museum board, 42.4 x 27.3 cm, © James Siena Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate, Courtesy of Pace Gallery
James Siena, Rulebreaker, 2016 , Ink on paper and museum board, 42.4 x 27.3 cm, © James Siena Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate, Courtesy of Pace Gallery

 

 

James Siena, Escaped Non-Map Fragment, 2016, Ink on paper and museum board, 34.9 x 27.3 cm, © James Siena Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate, Courtesy of Pace Gallery
James Siena, Escaped Non-Map Fragment, 2016, Ink on paper and museum board, 34.9 x 27.3 cm, © James Siena Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate, Courtesy of Pace Gallery

 

 

James Siena, Let There Be Nothing…, 2016, Ink on paper, 22.2 x 17.6 cm, © James Siena Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate, Courtesy of Pace Gallery
James Siena, Let There Be Nothing…, 2016, Ink on paper, 22.2 x 17.6 cm, © James Siena Photo: Kerry Ryan McFate, Courtesy of Pace Gallery