That the world is bad is a fact. That we have to draw in this world is another fact, because it is the world we inhabit and from which we cannot escape. So, what does it mean to draw in such a world? What does it mean to spend our days drawing? Wouldn’t it be better to do something else? To be an activist, for example? Does drawing in a bad world entail a special responsibility? Is it something that influences our line, our stroke, the supports we choose, the motifs we use and the subjects we deal with? Does this bad world have any relevance in our gesture, consciously or unconsciously? And what to draw in a bad world?
This exhibition is a conversation, somewhat disorderly, without beginning or end, with its moments of fragility and insecurity, like the materials of the exhibition itself: paper, ink, cardboard, clay. We produce these large drawings like two chess players drawing the squares of their chessboard as the game unfolds, using notes drawn from our notebooks, details forgotten or judged insignificant at the time, abandoned evidence, various surveys of forms and motifs. In this game there is something of the Squiggle game theorised by Winnicott for therapies with children: one produces an abstract scribble and the other has to transform it into a drawing that makes sense, somehow. We moved forward, each one with his pawns, his tactics, his traps, his obsessions, his favourite openings, accompanied by multiple references and ghosts. Some of them in fact live in the cardboard library where we put together book covers and cigarette butts, words and smoke, smoke and words. Because one thing we are sure of is that in this bad world, chatting with a friend while night falls is a precious thing.
