Drawing and Thinking - talk (2016)

Anthony Mccall in conversation with Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone, Whitechapel Gallery

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Anthony Mccall, New York based artist, is known for his installation series “solid-light” that he began in 1973. This talk at White Chapel gallery marks the release of his book “Notebooks and Conversations”, which comprises his unseen working drawings and ten years of conversations between himself and the two artists, Graham Ellard and Stephen Johnstone. In the last ten years, Mccall has about 50 notebooks, which are crucial for his working process. As his memory banks, the notebooks allow him to relook at his earlier ideas and bring them forwards to the present. His works occupy a threshold position between film and sculpture. They emphasize on perception, sensation and duration. He has influenced artists including Olafur Eliasson, and Sandra Gibson and Luis Recoder.

 

At the time of his early pieces, he was working exclusively in analog film. The piece “solid light” from 1973, as Anthony has written: “The film begins as a coherent of pencil of light like a laser beam and develops through 30 minutes into complete hollow cone.” Back at that time, dust particles in the air of often unfinished industrialize spaces and cigarette smoke in the room provided natural ambient haze that helped light effects to reveal.

 

Today, digital technology allows him to produce works more precise and complex, the series “Between You and I” as an example. In these works, animated lines drawing slowly interact to each other under different duration. The principle of its operation is that two - dimensional animated lines are allowed to be seen by a smoke machine or hazer, as three-dimensional form. I am interested in his work that it associates film, sculpture, drawing, and architecture. Slow pace movement of the lines allow spectators to physically and emotionally incorporate with them. And viewers are a part of the work.