Jennifer Printz

- Beyond the perceived associations
- Nascent State
- Not Imponderable

Artist Statement:

This work draws on the work and spirit of Chana Orloff. It is inspired by her work and working processes as well as her strength of character as an artist, a mother, and a woman. Through the process of researching her life and work, I found her to be a silent mentor chiding me on to challenge myself and stand firm in who I am as an artist and woman.

I first decided to treat my drawing surface like a sculptor and aggressively sanded away the inkjet opening up the image. The resulting surface held its decay and a left an openness to engage with. My imagery decisions were in response to the elegant monumentality of Orloff’s work and the contrasting delicate surface details in particular the subtle curving of the fan of the portrait of Yvanna Le Maistre. My goal was to draw in a way that suggested this feminine combination of power and delicacy.

This led me to research a step further and work with images of electromagnetic radiation. Rounded and with the suggestion of three-dimensional space these images reflect back on Orloff’s rounded female bodies and the invisible structures of the universe (a common theme within my work). Within each is a not so hidden female form – ovum, uterus, and ovary. Which brings the work back full circle to Orloff who often portrayed mothers and their children and was a mother herself. It also personal to my current journey, as I wrestle with my own infertility and have to decide how far I will or can go to become a mother and how this decision may or may not impact my art practice.

France

Paris

L'AiR Arts

Drawing

Electromagnetic Radiation Series

Martinet & Texereau

These drawings has been realized during the residency at Atelier 11, inspired by the Soutine's work.

Gladiolas series

These drawings has been realized during residency at Atelier 11, in Paris.

Atelier 11 Research

Grazielle Bruscato Portella

Aphonie et fragilité (drawing 1 – with the 2 ladies on the bed) 
Le vide que tu laisses  (drawing 2 – with the woman and apple)

These drawings were inspired by the “Crouching woman” sculptures made by Chana Orloff between 1925 and 1945. Orloff made a number of sculptures where we can see women in fragile and vulnerable poses, in which their faces are generally hidden between their arms. There was a strange force in these sculptures which attracted me. They made me think were we stood as women during her time. Were they ashamed? Were they crying? Were they screaming inside? All these questions came to me while trying to understand what Chana Orloff meant by them. 
Women are targeted with those issues until today. Chana Orloff, 80 years before, was already reflecting on the place of women, challenging us to view ourselves in different ways. I chose her work as inspiration because not only she is a woman but she encouraged other artists to explore their gifts, embracing our vulnerabilities and our strengths in whatever we do. Looking at these sculptures today, they made me think of the impact of social networks (e.g. Instagram) on young women’s body and the psychological issues involved. Somehow, Orloff’s sculptures captured an aspect of what means to be a woman even today, in introspective, silent, intimate moments, while inviting us to embrace our bodies, to speak out loud, to position ourselves, and to face the world.
My process was to first try to understand the poses Orloff by drawing different sculptures on graphite and pastel, allowing them to rest for a few days before I figured out what would be the next step. In this period, there is a lot of “not knowing”, pause, indecision and emptiness, which I try to accept as a creative process. Meanwhile, I kept drawing, this time physical spaces that encompasses these states I mentioned previously. After a few days, the need of placing Orloff’s sculpture drawings inside those spaces came to me. After producing some collages --also presented in this online exhibit--, I moved to work with dry pastel, where the images of these women in internal environments came to me. Isolation, introspection, unconsciousness, dream, fragility, power and delicacy, these are some of the keywords that informed these drawings. Like they are floating in these spaces, they try to navigate and find their own place.

Aphonie et fragilité / Le vide que tu laisses

Lorena Morales

Artist Statement:

I fell in love with the work of Ossip Zadkine and his use of positive/negative spaces on his sculptures and works on paper as well. In my work,  I am driven by the use of positive and negative spaces,  as a way to add dimensionality to each artwork, through light, shadows, and movement. 

This series of drawings on Mylar is inspired by pictures of his sculptures The Human Habitat, The Human Forest, and Nude on Elbow. My initial idea was to feature his use of the negative spaces and, then I realize, that by doing that, I was also telling a story of what I had missed seeing in person due to the impossibility to travel to Paris because of the pandemic. The positive space disappeared and, at the same time, became the main focus in each drawing. I choose these works by Zadkine because they give me the opportunity to depict, more clearly through my drawings, the sculptures’ shapes with their relationships between the negative and positive spaces. In the end, we got connected by the Fragile Power of Drawing.  

Zadkine's Negatives Series

Yen Ha

A series of drawings based on Chana Orloff’s home studio in the Villa Seurat. The Orloff drawings, monochromatic fine lines depicting exterior and interior spaces, are inspired by the community that supports us, even during a pandemic. A bit melancholy, the spaces are rendered empty of life or art. They could be lonely or, more optimistically, waiting patiently to be activated by our physical presence. 

Chana Orloff Atelier Series

Nicole Shimonek

The invitation was to respond to three artists: Ossip Zadkine, Chana Orloff and Antoine Bourdelle. Each artist used life drawing as source material for cubist sculptures. Nicole reflected on her own body and its relationship to drawing to make this work. The result is a series of performative photographs, drawing and patterns featuring an asymmetrical one-arm dress.

Mixed Media

Asymmetric Item: Dress

Dulce Chacon

Artist Statement:

These four drawings are a short sequence of the moment the sculpture “The destroyed city” that commemorates the German bombing in 1940, was unveiled in Rotterdam in 1953. When I saw the video of the event I got impressed by the first sight of it in which the majority of the piece was covered by a piece of fabric but it might be seen the arms outside of it. I think that even when you could ́t see the whole sculpture the two arms concentrate the central gesture that is alarming, traumatic, and very strong, qualities that Ossip Zadkine wanted to transmit in its work. On the drawings the shape of the sculpture is the most recognizable and everything around suggests the audience and the landscape but it turns abstract because of the treatment of the technique.

I wanted to capture a glimpse of the historical moment surrounded by the controversy and expectation but erasing bodies and faces allowing so the sculpture speaks by itself, but this time by the drawing.

Unveiling the Destroyed City series

Ole Lejbach

This drawing was inspired by the photograph of artist Valentine Prax (1897 – 1981), a French expressionist and cubist painter. She was also a wife of Ossip Zadkine who bequeathed their entire estate to the City of Paris to support the creation of the museum-atelier dedicated to her husband's work.

Valentine Prax

Dipali Gupta

Artist Statement:

Based on the wooden Venus Caryatid sculpture (1914) of Ossip Zadkine, Cyborg Venus is a rendition of vibrator drawings where the vibrator marks represent the female body. Venus known as the goddess of love in ancient mythology is usually represented as a beautiful woman. By disintegrating the form of the female body, I attempt to subvert notions of heterosexual love, male gaze and reclaim the feminine as a cyborg – an assemblage of human and machine capable of creating its new desire lines in order to elude androcentric and patriarchal systems of power.

The second drawing "Absent at Zadkine’s Birth of Venus" (59.4 x 42.0 cm, charcoal on fine grain drawing paper) is an attempt to interpret these sculptures into my own style, I try to feel them through my computer screen. I consider the distance between my studio in South East Asia and Paris where these works are displayed. Would I be able to see differently this sculpture which looks immediately two-dimensional on my computer screen? How would the play of light and shadows in the garden affect the sculpture? I try to capture the light and shadow through my charcoal depiction of this sculpture. Details are lost in the shadows of my computer print as I endeavour to capture the smooth and rough textures. I enjoy working in charcoal as I enjoy creating values and tones through dark and light shades, the smooth and harsh textures that the residue of the charcoal leaves on the paper. Despite the fact that the original piece created by Zadkine is a sculpture, my two-dimensional research via computer screens immediately flattens the object to a somewhat abstract form with shapes and imaginative textures.

Cyborg Venus

Tatiana Ferahian

Artist Statement:

I was particularly drawn to the “sense of rhythm and a multidimensional unity”, as well as the graceful and sensitive lines in Ossip Zadkine’s graphical works and/or drawings, before he substituted them with a more angular approach influenced by Cubism. I was particularly inspired by Zadkine's works: La belle endormie, La visitation de l’apocalypse, Leda and Les travaux d’Hercules.

Another point of interest to me was his fascination with monsters and mythical creatures found in Greek Mythology. As I am currently doing research on Mata Hari – often recreating her as a mythical creature in my drawings - I tried to morph her once again into a beastly creature, with multiple heads, wings, and dragon-like features in a manner in which Zadkine may have depicted her. An interesting fact is that they were both in Paris in the early 1900s, during which time a destitute Mata Hari was compelled to sit for artists to make a living before she became an exotic dancer (as she is commonly known for). There might be a chance that their paths may have crossed at some point. Given the luxury of time, I would certainly like to research this topic even further in the future.

Mata Hari the Dragon Lady

Hannah Stahulak

Artist Statement:

My interest in this residency stemmed from being able to visit Parisian art institutions and ateliers and getting to experience the spaces where so much artistic learning and innovation happened. As a medical illustration teacher, I’m interested in the history of the body in art and how art schools have historically supported this; both artists and physicians have sought after understanding and studying the body.

The 'Object in Inferior View' series of two drawings (blue is finished, pink one in progress) are silverpoint drawings depicting an inferior view of a skull. While the images are realistic in nature, I do find sections to feel abstract due to the smoothness of the silverpoint material. One gets lost in the details. In the early twentieth-century artists in Paris who trained in traditional drawing methods began to stray away from this in favor with abstract. I constantly feel a tug in my work between realism and abstraction and believe that a work of art can exist in both realms. 


Object in Inferior View series

Akira Chinen

Artist Statement:

My work usually borrows its themes from greek mythology, so when I saw the works of Zadkine, Orloff and specially Bourdelle I understood that I needed to pursue the same goal, to hone the tradition of drawing and human figure.

I’m always in this travel between past and present looking for stories that explain our nature. In this drawings I’m trying to depict the circularity of life, in which I present “Urano” the sky, father of the titans; “Hyperion”, the observation deity; and “Cronos” who overthrows his father Urano. None of this is happening in the drawings but Hyperion, the one who watches, knows.

The Titans Series: Urano, Hyperion, Cronos

L'AiR Arts is pleased to welcome you for a virtual visit to Atelier 11 - the last preserved atelier of the historical artists community of Cité Falguière in Paris. Hosting many prominent artists of the 20th century, including Modigliani, Soutine, Foujita, Brancusi, and Gauguin, Atelier 11 will continue the legacy of the École de Paris by welcoming artists of today as an International Arts Research Residency. 

Before beginning the extensive restoration of the Atelier, we invite you to discover the historical 3-level space, featuring the Fragile Power of Drawing exhibition. Presented as part of the Drawing Research Residency, the show seeks to pursue the tradition of artistic research in Paris. 

For over a century now, artists from all over the world have been flocking to Paris for inspiration. Those seeking to satisfy their passion for drawing attended the independent art academies of Montparnasse, which offered intellectual and artistic freedom from the constraints imposed by the fine art schools of the time. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, artists from abroad also spent countless hours studying works held in museum collections. Chaïm Soutine's still lifes were influenced by the works of Chardin and Rembrandt in the Louvre, while its Egyptian collection inspired Modigliani and Zadkine; Marc Chagall’s struggles for modernity drew on Delacroix’s art.

An essential part of the production process for many artists, drawing was historically overshadowed by the monumental mediums of sculpture and painting. Yet in the context of contemporary art, drawing is re-emerging as a powerful medium of its own. 

During the pandemic, L’AiR Arts has invited artists from different parts of the world to explore the online collections of three Paris atelier-museums of the sculptors Ossip Zadkine, Chana Orloff and Antoine Bourdelle. Just like the Atelier 11 of Cité Falguière, these cultural sites not only celebrate the legacy of  individual artists but also preserve the memory of the Ecole de Paris - whose influence continues to shape the international arts scene up until today. In the spirit of the experimental art academies and ateliers of Montparnasse, all drawing styles, techniques and materials were permitted, in dialogue with the past.

Curators: Rahma Khazam and ​​Véronique Devoldère

Learn more about artists' research through this Q&A series with the curator: http://www.lairarts.com/fragile-power-of-drawing.html

The proceeds from sales go directly to the artists, including 10% collected towards the residency scholarship fund to enable future artists to benefit from our programs.

Atelier 11 Cité Falguière - featuring "The Fragile Power of Drawing" Research Exhibition

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