Linda Karshan
august form 2002 - May 09 until June 14, 2003
“To speak or write about Linda Karshan’s drawings can only mean describing the process of their formation. But not as a process of forming something that ends up as a drawing. It means describing the drawing itself as the process of its own formation.
Even before she enters her studio Karshan begins to count, in repetitive and rhythmical sequences of varying lengths, it might be 2, 4, 8 or 16 numerical units. Or even one. The rhythm continues in the studio, marched out loud, and takes over the movements of the legs, the arms, the whole body. This rhythm with its energy is, like the artist herself, a subject of the drawing. It is powered by its own strength. Linda Karshan follows it with the pulses of her drawing, with her „marks“. Within a drawing the rhythm can speed up and slow down, can span longer or shorter periods.
The patterns that are formed from them, parallel lines or, often, orthogonal grid-like structures, are not intended but are the result. With countless minimal irregularities within the basic geometrical pattern: which fill the drawing with energy and animation. The germ of Linda Karshan’s drawing is found not in the form but in the rhythm, in the dance that takes place between the body and the sheet of paper. This derives from a circumstance that can only be described paradoxically: concentrated and self-forgetful, awake, „aware“ - „but not too much.“
Karshan’s drawing generates time, time experienced, time formed. Every „mark“ on the paper is an actual equivalent of time, the impact of a specific moment and its unique energised signature. Beginning and end are extinguished in the structures. The individual pulses form a counterpoint to the one comprehensive movement that is subsumed in a state of pure presence. In this way the exact record is realised, the „portrait“ of a specific situation at a specific time. For example, on this particular August day 2002 in the studio in Connecticut. August forms. Self-Portraits.” (Matthias Bärmann)
The exhibition comprises drawings done between 1996 and 2002.
A Catalogue will be published.(text by Matthias Bärmann).