Amy Sillman

For Amy Sillman, drawing is as much a part of her practice as painting. She frequently works in series. The most recent series of drawings is titled UGH for 2023, and is divided into two parts: 196 of the drawings bear the additional title Torsos and 103 drawings Words. Forms and letters are discernable in individual works, bodies and words becoming abstracted into lines and forms which are then treated as an experimental sequence. The artist worked rapidly and intuitively on the series, using acrylic paint and ink on paper.

In her drawings, Sillman is inspired the structures apparent in various writing systems, such as hieroglyphs or calligraphic characters, integrating them into forms the artist has created herself, which she executes – in a similar manner to her paintings – using precise physical gestures.

A selection of works from the series UGH for 2023 is presented sequentially on the wall and has been translated into the video animation Spring: abstraction as ruin (2024), featuring the almost 300 motifs from UGH – set to music by Marina Rosenfeld – that transform and merge into one another. Isolated brushstrokes become claws, boxing gloves, wrenches, and twisted limbs, only to again return to abstract forms.