SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- San Francisco’s Bruce Conner is one of the most important artists of the late 20th Century—pioneering art-making in sculpture, drawing, photography, collage and video. In Wayfinding, Hosfelt Gallery brings together a group of exquisite drawings made with “magic” marker between 1963 and 1975 that follow just one of Conner’s many aesthetic and conceptual paths.
Drawing was always a central part of Conner’s more than 50-year practice, but the 1963 introduction of the Pentel felt-tip watercolor marker was a game changer. Instead of constantly refilling the nib with ink, the “magic” marker enabled him to draw a continuous line without lifting pen from paper. At first this led to frenetic, hatch-like marks, which both define and veil representational images. By 1965, Conner developed an automatic drawing technique that could be used wherever he was. This method of working involved a combination of curving, straight and zig-zagging lines that never intersected and were so tightly packed the negative space between them was often narrower than the lines themselves. The negative/positive play between the black lines/white spaces creates an optical flicker comparable to the retinal effects Conner contemporaneously explored in his films.
Often psychedelic, these drawings informed the zeitgeist of the “Summer of Love” —energetic, innovative and tumultuous, but at the same time introspective and spiritual. Formally and stylistically varied, some follow Paul Klee’s adage that a line is “a dot that went for a walk,” others resolve into mandalas, maps or labyrinths. They reflect a culture in the midst of change, attempting to break with its past and searching for a way forward, as well as an artist attempting to navigate his course through life.
Bruce Conner's (1933-2008) work has been exhibited in and collected by major museums throughout the world, most recently and completely in the retrospective exhibition and major catalogue of his work, It’s All True, which was presented at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.
