Claire Zakiewicz performing drawing in Venice, Italy.
Using chalk pastels, the drawing unfolded through spontaneous disruptions involving risk, control, imperfection, and unity. The result is both a drawing and its documentation - but also a process: a hand-made negotiation between thought and flow, craft and catastrophe, conscious control and the practice of letting go.
Rooted in my ongoing engagement with the Meisner acting technique, active imagination and automatic drawing, the process privileges attunement over intention, allowing accidental and incidental marks to reveal a kind of truthful structure. My body became absorbed into patterns, the ground into space, the gesture into atmosphere.
My interest in the history of gesture in painting includes research into overlooked female artists such as Marietta Tintoretto and others whose legacies offer vital, embodied lineages.
While my attention was tuned to Steve Reich’s The Desert Music, I was also aware of making this work in a 14th century building in the centre of Venice and and of the lingering presence of the great Renaissance masters, including Tintoretto and his daughter Marietta, whose spirits seemed to move through the room and into the drawing.
This series of editions is produced in collaboration with Venice-based photographer Mark Edward Smith.
Mark Edward Smith is a photographer based in Venice born in 1942. He has assisted photographic stages with Helmut Newton, Marc Ribound, Elliott Erwitt and Oliviero Toscani. Smith was the official photographer for many years at Teatro Fenice, Biennale di Venezia and Palazzo Grassi. His photographs have been published in 56 books in Italy, France, USA, Germany, UK, Japan Korea, Spain and has published in a huge range of international publications including New York Times, The Time, Bell'Italia, Herald Tribune, Harpers Bazar and many others.
|
