hotwheels ,1998-2002
exhibition: fall selections 1999, the drawing center, ny
"Unlike my paintings, I make my drawings in series-usually the result of an exploration of an outside system or structuring process, tempered with a healthy dose of intuitive reactions. By setting up rules, I am forced away from a comfort zone - forced to continue to "work" - to discover things anew.
" The Hot Wheels Drawings were done using a 1969 stencil set made by Mattel. I had this toy as a kid - it is one of my earliest drawing memories. When I re-discovered the toy I began again, basically plotting down lines and forms (with a brush instead of the suggested pencil) quickly moving away from the Corvettes, Ford MK IVs, and Turbofires in an attempt to arrive at that interior landscape that occurs when one is quietly lost in the simple activity of drawing and looking at a picture. Using these six simple stencils, the box states that there are 216 possible drawings - I have been working on the series sporadically for about two years and so far I have completed around a 150.
" I am interested in the fact that these organic looking images are made up of the lines and shapes of hot rods and racing cars; and that the drawings are created entirely out of an arrangement of lines that are not my own (perhaps the accidental smudges and stains are the only marks that are truly mine). The ink colors were chosen in response to the remembered colors of actual Hot Wheels cars that I had as a kid; and thus, as the images move between suggestion and abstraction, they become a kind of reference to memory - and to the fleetingness of remembered things incomplete. "
all drawings are ink on paper 19" x 24".
click on the detail image to see the whole drawing
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