Re Draw is an exploration of drawing as a medium for a revisionist practice. Each artist in the exhibition begins with a known source: an old photograph, film-still, game, text, or an image of a celebrity or historical personage. When drawn, their sources become vehicles for altered meaning.

Ain Cocke, Jennifer Dudley, and Adam Shecter begin with images from photography and film. Cocke’s drawings deftly manipulate gesture and gaze to turn images of soldiers from aggressive combatants to romantic portraits of possible lovers. Shecter’s t-shirts serve as the surface for his drawing. Using a graphic line, he removes a woman ready to be kissed by Belmondo, creating a space for possibility not present in the original film-still. Dudley’s drawings insert her own image into the world of Jane Austen, acting out our desire to relive romantic versions of history through fiction, and suggesting the way history is simultaneously enriched and mangled by our blundering reincarnations.

Jessica Slaven and Molly Springfield both use text to examine content that is inclusive of, but not limited to, language. Slaven’s Ouija Boards serve as conduits not for spirits, but rather the non-verbal communication between two people creating meaning that neither fully controls. In Springfield’s drawings from photocopies of books, she uses text to address the issues representation and reproduction.

Haegeen Kim and Ami Tallman use drawing to give us a critical reworking of history in playful forms. Unlikely combinations of political figures, self-portraiture, gorillas, and Picasso toy with our notions of how such figures should be represented.

The shifting of form, and ultimately meaning, that each of these artists is engaged in finds its expression in the immediacy and flexibility of drawing.