Point of Departure – Group Exhibition

Group exhibition curated by Lisa Sigal and Rosario Güiraldes
Opening reception October 10th 6-8pm

Point of Departure marks the fourth iteration of Open Sessions, a six-part exhibition program presented between October 2018 and January 2020 at The Drawing Center. Organized by curators Rosario Güiraldes and Lisa Sigal, Open Sessions fosters a dynamic, ever-evolving dialogue with new drawing practices and practitioners, exhibiting and contextualizing the work of early career artists who explore the nature of drawing in its many manifestations through conversation, public programs, and thematic group exhibitions.

The works on view—by Bahar Behbahani, Keren Benbenisty, Katarina Burin, Jesse Chun, Carolina Fusilier, and Rachel Granofsky draw inspiration from American artist Paul Thek’s imaginative and unconventional approach to the medium of drawing. When Thek taught art classes at The Cooper Union in the late 1970s, he gave his students a list of eccentric instructions titled, “Teaching Notes: 4-Dimensional Design.” Using Thek’s notes as a springboard, the artists in Point of Departure created their own set of directives, combining reason and imagination to reconsider their own artistic processes. The directives’ correlating artworks include drawings for the transportation of people, memories, and belongings; renderings of disappeared Palestinian villages from 1948 to the present; as well as personal memories of civic designs in the former Yugoslavia.