Berlin-based Monika Grzymala listens to line, orchestrating its shifting intimations into space, plane, landscape, performance, and sculpture. Her Raumzeichnung (Space Drawing) works—which she defines as thought guided by the hand—always push boundaries, reconsidering how we define artworks and their parameters. Using adhesive tape, handmade washi paper, paper clay, and a wide range of other unlikely materials, she creates large-scale, site-specific installations that translate the idea of drawing into three dimensions through bodily movement in space. Dramatic and forceful, or tranquil and gentle, Grzymala’s rhythmic gestures unfurl like music, and what might be thought of as visible melodies become lifelines, networks that connect us to a physical and imaginative dimension governed by confluence.
Robert Preece: You started out as a stone sculptor. What is it about line that holds your interest so intensely? How do you think about line and use it as a tool of expression?
Monika Grzymala: Let’s start with a statement by Leonardo da Vinci: “Line has in itself neither matter nor substance and may rather be called an imaginary idea than a real object.” When it is about line, there is so much already said and still so much to talk about. . .
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