UBS Openings: Drawings from the UBS Art Collection

Tate Modern
4 May – 4 Nov 2007 [free entry]

Drawings by artists includes: Charles Avery, George Baselitz, Alighiero e Boetti, Vija Celmins, Chuck Close, John Currin, Bruce Conner, Walter Dahn, Joel Fisher, Helen Frankenthaler, Lucian Freud, Robert Gober, Philip Guston, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Franz Kline, Markus Lupertz, Rosemari Trockel, Ed Ruscha, Jim Shaw, Michele Zalopany.

I wandered to the over populated Tate Modern to check out the drawings that were on display. Like the density of people at the Tate the drawings were also slightly too cramped.

These are notes that I made while I looked and walked around.

Alighiero e Boetti Aerei 1978 – ball point pen – plane spotting put into a picture, he his making the sky with his pen marks

Galaxy #1 (Coma Berenices) Vija Celmins – Still powerful, but the galaxy needs to breathe and it can’t do it next to the Boetti.

Untitled 1961 Helen Frankenthaler – blobs and spirals – a dedication that becomes part of the drawing

Untitled (Drawing No. 1) 1988-9 Joel Fisher – the curved red ochre graphite line gone over with black becomes almost the same register as the ground, the hand made paper with its rough edge.

Coiled Paper 1973 Edward Ruscha – the image throws you back to the ground of the image with its own subtle undulations within the frame.

Untitled #5 (Double Sink) 1985 Robert Gober – My eye looks at the ripped out sketchbook edge (series of vertical holes along the left edge of the page), I glance at the title and back to the image. I see two bodies, two figures and wonder which side left or right made the drawing. Who is the significant other, so close that you would share dirty water with? Traces

Untitled 1971-2 Cy Twombly – A wrong tilted grid that automatically makes me see Agnes Martin’s grids and lines that remind me of a tree in winter scratching on the glass in the wind.

Hunters’ Cabin Charles Avery – Drawing has x-ray vision.