02 August 2011

Art I like - Ingrid Calame

Ingrid Calame has a cartographic desire to know the world. "Tracing these minutiae is a way of doing the impossible; of trying to represent the world."

She goes out in the world and makes tracings - of grafitti, of stains, of other marks - then layers the tracings and re-traces them, each layer a different colour. "The drawings are always a surprise," she says; "my journey through tracing different sites, working with and meeting people and seeing their reactions to the work - all this has changed my understanding of representation and abstraction."
She also uses solid areas of paint, systematically - but without knowing what will happen next. Using a system "is actually a freeing device; it frees you up to think about lots of other things." Like mixing colours, how colours interact, and the light in a place as she walks around.

She currently has an exhibition at Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh (till 9 October). See more of her work here, and a video here.

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