“Much of the best work being produced today seems to fall between media. This is no accident. The concept of the separation between media arose in the Renaissance. The idea that a painting is made of paint on canvas or that a sculpture should not be painted seems characteristic of the kind of social thought-categorizing and dividing society into nobility with its various subdivisions, untitled gentry, artisans, serfs and landless workers-which we call the feudal conception of the Great Chain of Being. However, the social problems that characterize our time, as opposed to the political ones, no longer allow a compartmentalized approach. We are approaching the dawn of a classless society, to which separation into rigid categories is absolutely irrelevant.” -Dick Higgins Intermedia, 1967

James Fuentes LLC is pleased to announce “Drawing is a Verb and a Noun” a group exhibition featuring; Lizzi Bougatsos, Brian DeGraw, Baptiste Ibar, Alison Knowles, David Perry, Agathe Snow, and William Stone. The exhibition presents divergent meanings of what a drawing can be. Lizzi Bougatsos’ “Love Comes in X’s like marking `em out instead of #’s. I also can’t give any love ‘cause everyone is dead or I can do this to your house.,” (2007) is a group of twelve knives seemingly thrown at the wall that create the shape of a heart. Also on view will be collages many of which she titles Action Drawings. Brian DeGraw’s series “Young Bob Dylan,” (2007) is a group of twelve identical drawings of a young Bob Dylan. Slight variations occur between each portrait because the mechanics of drawing have rendered an eyebrow slightly different here or a line slightly different there. Each drawing is punctuated by ink splatters embracing a chance technique.

There is an element of self-portrait in every picture by Georg Gatsas. His photographs of landscapes and people give insight to his life and the artists and visual worlds that shape his practice. The diptych “Irm Hermann (Despair),” 2007 is a record of a chance meeting Gatsas had with Irm Hermann, a significant of collaborator of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s who appeared in twenty-four of his films. In Baptiste Ibar’s “Palette Paintings,” (2007) the artist extracts faces from the amorphous clusters of paint that culminated on his palette effectively utilizing one of the most the discarded, yet essential, tools of the painting proccess.

In 1967, Alison Knowles used the computer language Fortran to create “House of Dust,” (1967/2007), the first computer determined poem on record. The poem consisted of randomly generated quatrains of possibilities: “a house of (list material), (list location) (list light source) (list inhabitants). David Perry’s diptych “9/11 Inside Job,” (2007) embeds a painted canvas and an essay printed from the computer (The War on Consciousness, by Paul Levy) under resin within drawing presentation boxes. The work incorporates elements of drawing, painting and sculpture. The resultant friction of depth and materials creates a sense of movement. Agathe Snow’s work “Draw the Line,” (2007- ) evokes the maximal implication of the minimal line. A line is drawn by Snow or a person designated by the artist from point A to point B. The work is as of yet of indetermined length and medium and may go north or south or east to west. The gesture is reminiscent of Fluxus instruction (Score) works and Sol Lewitt diagrams, and highlights a performative aspect of art making. William Stone’s found painting alterations stem from the human instinct to adjust a picture on the wall if it seems crooked. Stone’s revisions to found paintings or in the case of “Europe” (2007) additions, adjust these paintings to a pitch that is to the artists liking.