Collection 3

Contours

Reduction is the oldest technique in this room, not the newest. Long before modern line drawing, the memento mori was being cut down to almost nothing, a skull, a level, two hanging weights, and no other information, because a reminder that has to be studied is a reminder that gets ignored. The single continuous line belongs to the twentieth century, to Matisse and Picasso and the discipline of drawing an entire form without lifting the hand, but it serves the same end: everything that could be admired instead of understood has been removed. What is left is a shape you recognise instantly and a great deal of empty paper. The pieces in this collection are quiet on purpose. They are meant to hang somewhere you look every day, and to say the same thing each time without ever raising their voice.