Drawing in Space I Gallery Syster I Lulea, Sweden
2017
Thread, Nails and Glue
Drawing in Space is an ongoing site-specific drawing project based on the spatial narrative of the site, focusing on the question of perception through lines and forms in the built environment, thereby transforming architecture into an active participant. Composed of thread-based spatial drawings, the work generates shifting geometries that evolve with the viewer’s movement, turning observation into embodied interaction. Guided by self-devised systems of arithmetic, codes, and structured instructions that provide the interventions with an underlying framework for the spatial compositions. The series of works aims to integrate geometry, line, material, and light to construct a visual language that gives form to the rhythms and relationships already present within a site.
The origins of Drawing in Space’can be traced to 2011, when the idea first emerged during my MA Degree Show at Nottingham Trent University, UK. The experience of watching viewers repeatedly move towards and away from a site-specific drawing within the exhibition space prompted a fundamental question in me: “What if the viewer could move into the drawing itself, as though entering a labyrinth?” The very question became the conceptual foundation towards developing these works of linear drawing as a three-dimensional and spatial practice.
Since then, multiple iterations of Drawing in Space have been developed across varied architectural contexts over time, each extending the central investigation of mark-making within three-dimensional space. The work approaches drawing as a site-conditioned intervention, where a negotiation between the architecture, material conditions, geometry, light, and dynamics of each location actively determines the form the drawing eventually takes. Rather than forcing drawing onto a surface, it is the conditions of the site that suggest drawings and spatial interventions. Each site presents a unique set of constraints and challenges, and it is often the complexity or difficulty of those conditions that generates the most compelling engagements and possibilities to work with.
The site- specific work in the ongoing Drawing in Space project was developed during my residency at Gallery Syster in Lulea, Sweden in 2017. Unlike the longer-term site-specific interventions that had previously allowed several weeks of engagement with an architectural space, this work was conceived as a smaller and more immediate intervention, shaped by the temporary nature and limited timeframe available for the said project. The work continued to draw from my ‘Black Drawings’ series, carrying forward its central idea of spatial drawing compositions. Composed of threads, nails and glue, the installation was aimed towards expanding linear drawing into the surrounding architectural space and beyond the constraints of its inherent two-dimensional edges. The site-specific work generates shifting geometries that evolve with the viewer’s movement, transform architecture into an active participant, and turn observation into an embodied interaction within the dynamic spatial composition.
Link for the residency project https://parulguptastudio.com/work/project-gallery-syster/
