Experimental drawings that use ambiguous or paradoxical injunction(1) as a kind of source generator for abstract gestural drawing.
For example the asemic injunction ‘write without words’.
The instruction is a 'call for action'.
The injunction to 'write' constitutes a language-based content but the restriction to 'not-use-words' obstructs the bulk of the formation and prevents it to externalize into a linguistic expression.
Under pressure conflicts like this, between digital and analogue domains can be made to erupt in an uncontrolled gestural reflex.
(This is not like the ‘get-it-out-of-your-system-and you’ll-be-ok’ catharsis kind of expressionism because it results from conflicts in communication and not a built up frustration from the past. The generated energy also differs from the raw energy suggested in classic abstract expressionist painting in that it doesn't imply some idea of primitive man acting out but is purely situational).
The uncoordinated gesture can be used to draw unpredictable and chaotic lines.
It is this basic sensorimotoric pattern that is the source of these drawings and that pose the gesture as the antipode to a formal grid.
(1) see; Bateson and Watzlawick; although here paradoxical injunction is used in an artistic rather than a psychiatric context, the common denominator is the 'breaking of a routine’.
