Drawing in Space I India Art Fair, Delhi
Presented by Exhibit320
2017
Thread, Needles, Nails, Glue and Permanent Marker on the Wall
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 here was made for the India Art Fair, Delhi, and exhibited at its Project Space in 2017, supported by 1After320. Unlike the earlier iterations, this work was conceived as a smaller and more immediate intervention, shaped by the temporary nature and limited timeframe available for the said project. Here, the work formed part of a broader presentation that brought together three strands of the earlier Making Space project: Durational Drawing, Collaborative Drawing, and a distilled rendition of Drawing in Space. The spatial drawing developed within the Project Space at the fair evoked the delicate structure of a spider web, an intricate network of lines that appears fragile yet possesses an internal logic and structural strength. Further, the work continued to draw from the visual language of my Black Drawings, which has remained the primary source for the spatial interventions within the series. The flexibility of Black Drawings lies partly in their relationship to the dimensions of the paper.
Unlike more conventionally composed drawings that occupy a central position within the page, these works respond to the width, length, and boundaries of the paper itself. Their linear structures are therefore inherently open-ended and adaptable, allowing them to expand, stretch, and transform when transferred from a two-dimensional surface into a three-dimensional architectural environment, a quality that makes them particularly suited to spatial translation. Their compositions can be extended beyond the limits of the page and reconfigured according to the dimensions and conditions of a given site. At India Art Fair, this adaptability allowed the drawing to be condensed into a smaller spatial intervention while retaining the essential logic of the larger Drawing in Space project.
Link for the project https://parulguptastudio.com/work/project-india-art-fair/
