Out of Thin Air: Emerging Forms examines drawing as a meditative process that invites the gradual appearance of indeterminate images. Selected from the Menil’s permanent collection, this display of twenty-nine drawings dating from the late 1930s to the present is united by a visual concept: emerging forms. Not fully resolved or strictly defined, the works in this exhibition are open, suggestive images that seem as though they are still in the process of becoming.
Artists have embraced this type of practice for myriad reasons that range from an unlocking of the subconscious to an exploration of nature’s most complex systems, including vast cosmic realms and immaterial energies. Artists represented include Lee Bontecou, John Cage, Gustavo Díaz, Hiroyuki Doi, Sonia Gechtoff, Gregory Masurovsky, Alan Saret, and Hedda Sterne, among others.
Out of Thin Air: Emerging Forms is curated by Kirsten Marples, Curatorial Associate, Menil Drawing Institute.
This exhibition is generously supported by Sheila Noeth and Ted Dohman, and by the City of Houston through Houston Arts Alliance.