Here is someone who is pushing a common medium to its limits. Il Lee: Ballpoint Drawings is on exhibitt at the Queens Museum of Art until September 30. The museum site writes, "Il Lee (b. 1952), a Korean-born artist living and working in Brooklyn since 1977. Using disposable ballpoint pens, Lee creates dramatic ink fields on surfaces of canvas and paper. For this exhibition, he will present a selection of large format blue and black ink drawings, including early experimental studies and an impressive fifty-foot installation—his largest work to date. Among other recent and historical artistic influences, Lee is largely inspired by Minimalism and the Asian practice of Sumukhwa (ink and wash painting). By combining an inclination toward austerely controlled forms with the distinctive fluidity of ink, he melds Eastern and Western cultural aesthetics into abstractions that are contemporary, yet firmly rooted in tradition."
There is a nice review in the New Yorik Times, To See the World in Ballpoint Pen. I hope to get down to see it. I have been experimenting in ink drainwgs but focusing on realism so far.
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