Claude Heath

Missing the Third Dimension

Much of my recent work has been about how to look at and draw something in three dimensions, using folded and shaped surfaces. I know from my own experience that tactile and visual sensation is very difficult to contain on the page: does a line veer towards the left or to the right to describe a contour, does it move up the page or down it to describe what is near or far?If a dance choreographer has to write down a record of a set of movements for the dancers to be able to reproduce them, then the notation used is a  set of symbols: these refer to a dancers traverse through defined space while taking account of what they call 'the missing third dimension'. This hint of frustration at the two-dimensionality of the sheet of paper is something that they would seem to share with the sculptor.

In the sculptors drawings that I saw at Leeds there seemed to be a strong awareness of that missing third dimension and how it is possible to compensate for it. Interestingly, to this end a single work may be pulled in a number of different directions at the same time, for instance horizontally as opposed to vertically. For example in Bethan Huws' spiralling pools which are intersected by upright waves, or Paul Neagu's isometric tower surrounded by circling marks. Most of the works chosen exhibit some degree of this revolving around or over their subject. This striving to compress onto the page results in a spectrum of reactions: some will want to take us around the subject and show it from many sides in a series of views, others will be inclined to take an architectural approach and give us a plan and elevation, a few will want the drawing to be primarily a flat object. Sometimes there will be a jump into actual three dimensions, for example the cut paper of Terauchi, or the drawn marks on Deacons maquettes, and the animated folded drawings of Thornycroft. Noticing these differing ways in which two dimensions have been made to stretch around three, I hope allows us to use our eyes in a more of a tactile way.

Claude Heath, Selector of the exhibition, Sculpture on Paper: Drawings from the Collection, Study Galleries, Leeds City Art Gallery, 2004.

 

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