Accidental Abstraction: Works by Marc Nagtzaam

Marc Nagtzaam is a Dutch artist who lives and works in Belgium. His production consists mostly of black and white graphite drawings on different formats of paper. The subjects of these drawings are minimalistic patterns or grids, and representation of written words in the conceptual-art tradition. The sheets are filled through the act of drawing in order to obtain large black or grey areas but, in the end, the gestural dimension of drawing is erased to reveal a neutral surface.

The artist also produces spatial installations which replicate in three-dimensional form the abstract compositional logics of the drawings.

 

 

 

 

(…) If I have said nothing until now about the fact that these are drawings, it is because they have a way of largely eluding the logic of drawing. But what is the logic of drawing? Is there even a logic? I think so, and I think that logic is evocatively embodied in the English designation of the act: drawing. Flowing uncertainly forth, the word seems to meander out of the mouth (dra-ahhhhh-ing), as if searching for something, not quite sure what it will find. It seems to born of a logic of no logic, unbounded by any principle but a hesitating openness to discovery. And while Nagtzaam’s drawings are far from devoid of any sense of discovery, they are extremely programatic, composed of tight, deliberate gestures (Indeed, raising the stakes of impersonality significantly, Nagtzaam told me how for him the drawings could potentially be outsourced, executed by another hand, as in Moholy-Nagy’s Telephone Paintings or Sol Lewitt’s wall drawings). (…)  (Excerpt from “Introduction” Chris Sharp, Paris 2010 – on www.marcnagtzaam.info)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All images © Marc Nagtzaam