Charles Long: Drawings: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York
Tanya Bonakdar Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of pastel drawings on paper and two large wall drawings by the New York-based sculptor, Charles Long.
These drawings, executed over the past two years, share a similar concern with Long's sculptural work in the exploration of the autonomous object and its potential extensions and connections. They explore the generosity of forms that lie not so much in the world but in the unconscious, rendering uncensored yearnings and fears of love, loss, family, beauty and the grotesque.
Using a contrasting colored ground, Long deposits pastel pigment to rouse a lyrical, organic shape that pops against the paper. He then generates texture, sculpting a sense of mass. Rather than following perceptual logic of light and shadow, the choice made between reading an area as reflected light from below or heavy shadow from above remains undetermined for the viewer. The results lie somewhere between the surprising pre-psychedelic effects found in Old Master chalk drawings and the post-real false color rendering of computer-manipulated imagery.