Encounter

Branka Sinobad

 

12 – 22 January I Webb Gallery I QCA Galleries

 

 

Branka Sinobad makes art in a deep state of attentiveness, opening her mind and body to the rhythms of the world around her. She uses her body as a tool to focus and distill this energy. Through extended observation and repetitive movement, crouched, drawing tool in hand, Sinobad slowly gathers an understanding of her subject - the way a figure inhabits a space, the energy and rhythms that connect artist and model. Collecting marks intentional and accidental, the paper records the passage of the artist’s body through space and time. 

 

The works in Sinobad’s solo show Encounter firmly employ the language of figure drawing. They repeat a format: a concentration of linear energy bound by the constraints of rectangular paper. The sculpture is the exception. Here the same visual language is repeated, but the tangle of lines escapes the rectangle of the ground. Shadows are cast on walls and floors, multiplying to interact with the two dimensional works.

 

Works on paper are divided into light and dark. There is a contradiction between the light airy drawings on thin white ground and the darker, denser atmospheric works. In the lighter works, complex trace mono-printed lines float above the paper, as though their accumulated energy is about to lift them from the surface. 

 

The darker works, also trace mono-types, conversely have a velvety depth. Lines move languidly across the page. They are bound to the surface by a layering of tone. Marks sink into the ground, drawing the viewer into a deeper pictorial space.

 

The video work Seeing You is a collaboration between Sinobad and cinematographer/model Cody Wood. Exploring the model/artist relationship, the film casts Sinobad and Wood simultaneously as artist and model - each performing and recording. As the performance unfolds, the attention of the viewer moves from the physicality of the mark making to the invisible connection that develops between artist and model. 

 

The threads of the artist’s practice are woven together in Encounter:  drawing, but also painting, printmaking, performance, sculpture and video. The works, one after the other, express Sinobad’s desire to deeply encounter, feel and understand the rhythms of the world around her.

 

 

 

Curated by Annie O’Rourke and Natalie Wood