Thursday, March 28, 2024 Mar 28, 2024
68° F Dallas, TX
Advertisement
A

Il Lee’s Large Ballpoint Pen Drawings Harness a Powerful Quiet

Calm and frenzy lay down together in the remarkable little show of big work New Vision: Ballpoint Drawings by Il Lee at the Crow Collection through September 26. Lee makes huge abstract drawings by scribbling with a ballpoint pen until paper or canvas is coated with shiny blue-purple or black ink. Hyperactive scribbles fade to a stolid calm of opacity in all of the large works here, creating amorphous shapes that seem to move, or grow, more suitably, from out of some void off the page. These drawings create the kind of claustrophobia that comes when considering infinite space: a gasp-worthy, confounding feeling of being consumed by an empty frontier.
By Lucia Simek |
Image

Calm and frenzy lay down together in the remarkable little show of big work New Vision: Ballpoint Drawings by Il Lee at the Crow Collection through September 26. Lee makes huge abstract drawings by scribbling with a ballpoint pen until paper or canvas is coated with shiny blue-purple or black ink. Hyperactive scribbles fade to a stolid calm of opacity in all of the large works here, creating amorphous shapes that seem to move, or grow, more suitably, from out of some void off the page. These drawings create the kind of claustrophobia that comes when considering infinite space: a gasp-worthy, confounding feeling of being consumed by an empty frontier.

Il Lee, Untitled 978 I, 1997, Ballpoint pen on paper (Courtesy of Art Projects International, New York)

In fact, Lee’s drawings render a kind of undeniable geography. The first piece a visitor encounters in the gallery is a tremendous (BL-095, 87 x 144 inches) drawing on raw canvas that shows a wide mountain shape. At the bottom of the canvas, the ink markings amass in square-like shapes, gradually coalescing into a solid mass of perfectly blue, uninterrupted ink that forms a line so stark and clear on the canvas that the whole shape seems created, not made. In another, Untitled 9781, three columnar shapes rise up like trunks into a sea of scribbles, each column touching the other’s solid black back with fuzzy scribble static. Untitled 801 feels like a sea swarm of waves gathering in on something out of frame. A spirographic encroachment.

A wall of the gallery is also filled from floor to ceiling with Il Lee’s smaller drawings. These show more earthly abstractions: mountains, a smoking volcano, hints of forests, swarms of flying creatures, but also celestial configurations: myriad starry skies, deep whirls of energy and cosmic chaos.

It’s rare to encounter work that has harnessed so much power, through such effort, so quietly.

Il Lee, IW101, 2010, Acrylic, oil stick, and stylus on canvas (Courtesy of Art Projects International, New York)

Main image: Il Lee, BL-095, 2008, ballpoint pen on canvas (Courtesy of Art Projects International, New York).

Related Articles

Image
Basketball

Kyrie and Luka: A Love Story

It didn't work last season, but the dynamic duo this year is showing us something special.
Image
Politics & Government

Q&A: Senate Hopeful Colin Allred Says November Election Is ‘Larger Than Our Own Problems’

The congressman has experience beating an entrenched and well-funded incumbent. Will that translate to a statewide win for the Democrats for the first time since 1994?
Advertisement