Figures and Places
Between June 8 and August 19, 2022, nearly every drawing was a mask. This room holds the twenty-one that were not. A figure with a balloon in a city, a man in a cage of red rain, a crow, a valley, a robot in the sun, a dog, a tree, a skeleton by a river. They were drawn in the gaps between the masks, sometimes on the same day.
They do not share a look. Some are a few lines on white. Some are painted. Some are as packed as the masks themselves, and two are crowds of masked figures standing together like a family photograph. What they share is that each one has a place in it: a street, a cage, a field, a fence, a sky.
Look for the horizon. The masks have none; they fill the square. Nearly everything here stands on a line, or under a sky, or beside a wall.
Figures in Places
Six works from June 14 to 28. A figure in a patterned field, a figure with a balloon, a figure in ink, a man in a cage, a crow, and a valley.
NNOTB #142
A red figure with spiral eyes and a grin stands in a field of yellow, green and purple pattern, a small black figure at its feet, white lines looping over everything.
NNOTB #146
A black figure with a red face and a red chest walks through a pale city holding a red balloon on a long string. The buildings are a few thin lines, a tower, a fence, a window grid, and the sky is patches of blue and pink. The balloon has a small crown drawn on it. Fifty-four recorded strokes make the whole scene, and the figure, drawn in solid black with a thin red edge, is the one dark thing in it.
NNOTB #148
A figure in black ink on white, seated with one leg out, its head a spiky skull with a grin, drawn in a few thick strokes and thin outlines.
NNOTB #152
A figure with a crown stands inside a cage of red lines on black, under a roof of yellow and white. The lines fall from the roof like rain, and the figure behind them is drawn in white and yellow line with spiral eyes and a grin, its hands drawn in white at the bottom. Forty-four strokes, nearly all of them the red bars of the cage.
NNOTB #156
A crow with a red X eye and a red target on its wing stands on a perch in a storm of grey and black scribble, inside a grey frame.
NNOTB #158
A valley. A blue river runs down between yellow hills, a green ridge rises at the right, and a pale sky of white and blue clouds is drawn over with thin black lines. Everything is scribbled in loops, the hills in yellow, the ridge in green, the river in blue, but the loops follow the land. It is the one open landscape in the mask months, drawn June 28, 2022.
Crowds and a Robot
July. A figure with a falling man, a maze of blocks, two crowds of masked figures, a robot in the sun, and a figure in the rain.
NNOTB #169
A painted figure in purple and gold with a spiral eye looks up at a small figure tumbling in the pink above, drawn in loops of yellow and blue line.
NNOTB #177
A maze of colored blocks in black, red, blue and green, with yellow beads running through it and a tiny white figure with raised arms at the bottom.
NNOTB #182
A dark crowd. Masked figures stand together in red, black and gold scribble: a skull with a crown at the left, a round head with a beam at the top, a face with a wide mouth of teeth at the right, and a small figure with a pale face at the bottom. A pink flower sits at the upper left. The figures overlap, and no one has the whole square. It is the first of two crowds in the room, drawn July 10, with 257 strokes.
NNOTB #183
The second crowd, nine days later. Four masked figures stand in a row, each with blue ringed eyes and a red mouth of white teeth, a black cat with X eyes beside them and a cat-eared figure at the upper left. The line is white and yellow over black and gold, and the figures are drawn more clearly than in the first crowd: each has a head, a body and a place in the row. Where the first crowd overlapped, this one lines up.
Compare with #182, in this room
NNOTB #186
A gold robot with two red ringed eyes and a grille of teeth stands in rays of yellow sun, its body built from boxes, a flower at the upper left.
NNOTB #191
A figure in a gold hood stands in blue rain under a sun and a band of cloud, a yellow beam crossing it, its face a few dark marks in a glow.
A Dog, a Tree, a River
July 31 to August 19. Two flat figures on one day, a skull in a summer shirt, a tree, and the last scenes of the mask months.
NNOTB #212
A black dog stands on a black hill against pale blue, its mouth open, with short yellow wavy lines in a ring around it. Nothing is inside the black: no eye, no collar. It is the flat silhouette formula from the spring, drawn once more on July 31, 2022, in 49 strokes, in the middle of the mask months.
NNOTB #213
A figure with a sun for a head walks on black, its body a pink dress and its legs long yellow lines, with a ring of purple discs behind it like a flower.
NNOTB #214
A yellow skull with blue goggles and a red cap, a grin of grey teeth, in a white tee that says CCO SUMMER, on black scattered with white marks.
NNOTB #219
A tree in full leaf, painted in hundreds of small dabs of yellow, green, pink and red, standing behind a fence in a yellow light that falls from the upper left. The trunk is a few dark strokes under the mass of leaves, and the grass at the bottom is small dabs too. With 1,758 recorded strokes it is the most worked drawing in the whole collection, and it is the one drawing in the mask months with no face in it at all.
NNOTB #221
A yellow figure with a long striped neck curls around itself in a field of orange, pink and blue bars, its head at the upper left with a grin of teeth.
NNOTB #225
A figure with long black hair over a blue body stands on brown, its face a yellow flower with two red X eyes and a grin of white teeth, small flowers at its feet.
NNOTB #228
A purple skull with green hair and two red spiral eyes grins on slate, with blue rays around its head and yellow beads at its neck.
NNOTB #232
Gold bars and a red sun, four red discs down the middle, a yellow fence at the bottom, no figure.
NNOTB #233
A dense scene by a river: two white skeletons stand on a black mound at the upper left, a pink pig with a crown sits at the lower right, a yellow sun with a spiral at the center, and a black bridge with a yellow stripe crosses the top right. Red and blue lines loop over the whole picture. It is the last work of the mask months, drawn August 19, 2022, and the only one in the room with a crowd, a creature, a sun and water all together.
Closing
The figure with the balloon walks through a city drawn in a few lines. By the river, everything is packed in at once. Both are places. The masks of the summer have no place at all, and that is why these twenty-one hang together.