The Artless Drawing, Neil Denari

The Artless Drawing is an exhibition on the exquisitely detailed, proto-digital work of architect Neil Denari. It is organized by Sylvia Lavin and Hi-C, a UCLA Architecture and Urban Design student group. Long before photo-realistic renderings and computer aided designs became ubiquitous, Neil Denari was producing drawings that not only anticipated the digital but that established the now familiar visual language commonly assumed to have been the byproduct of software protocols. His drawings, painstakingly made by hand, appear to have been emitted from a machine programmed for accuracy rather than sketched by an architect seeking artistic expression and a signature. The Artless Drawing focuses on works made between 1982 and 1996, the period just before the computer became a standard architectural tool and the period during which representation in general was undergoing a seismic cultural shift, disassociating itself from the classical values of truth and beauty and moving towards the dystopic and media saturated landscape of today. Throughout the exhibition, the focus is on Denari’s rich combinations of materials, such as Mylar, graphite and vellum, with hand drawing techniques, such as the control of line weights, free-hand sketching and extreme perspective, as well as with every mechanical process of reproduction available then, such as photo static reproductions, print and trace. The works are shown on light boxes that anticipate the glowing screens on which all architectural drawings are made today in order both to emphasize the proleptic future captured in Denari’s images as well as to firmly resituate them as historical acts of invention. The Artless Drawing opens at Ace Gallery Los Angeles on June 6 at 6:30pm, and runs through July 15. Sunday, 06 June 2010 18:30 - 20:30 Ace Gallery Los Angeles 5514 Wilshire Blvd Los Angeles, CA