"Because my eyes are drawing eyes, I sometimes see things that others might not think of as drawings." - Christine Taylor Patten

Prior to their appearance at the Istanbul Biennial 2015, drawings by Christine Taylor Patten will be exhibited at Leyden Gallery. The micro/macro drawings are part of a continuum of 2000 2.5 cm crowquill and black ink drawings made over 40 years. Curated by Art Historian Griselda Pollock.

These drawings are part of the artist’s micro/macro series, which she began in 1998. This series consists of 2,001 works: a continuum of 2,000 one-by-one-inch drawings and 1 seven-by-twenty-four-feet drawing. This exhibition will consist of 250 of the intricately wrought, crow quill and ink micros as well as a large scale study for the macro entitled imagine2. The micro/macro drawings on display are crowquill and black ink drawings that progress from a single dot in space that breaks apart and then evolves into myriad movements, each one referencing the previous drawing and promising new possibilities for another. Patten says that she is ‘fascinated by the interconnections that happened as the series progresses, exposing familiar form caused by what has come before. The images reiterate each other yet they are changing from one movement to another, ad infinitum, with each pen stroke responding to what has already happened in the drawing. At each point of convergence the direction of the image is arbitrary, unplanned, evolving amongst the infinite possibilities generated by the process.’

The show is co-curated by Adriana Cerne and the esteemed Art Historian Griselda Pollock who will give a talk on the work of Christine Taylor Patten at Leyden Gallery on the 13th March. Pollock is also an advisor to the Istanbul Biennale in 2015, where Christine Taylor Patten’s work will be exhibited following its appearance at Leyden Gallery.

As Griselda Pollock has said of this work, it is ‘Abstract, yet akin to contemporary scientific researches into chaos theory and turbulence, Christine Taylor Patten's work resonates with contemporary physics but also with music and the visual arts. Bach and Vermeer are invoked by the artist as her mentors and models, the one endlessly fascinated with the very possibilities of musical form yet deeply and passionately ethical and spiritual, the other quiet, purposive and relentless in his pursuit of a moment of peace in the resolved rhythm of the visual field. One might consider these drawings akin to the Fugues of Bach - and in this sense what we are looking at in this project is the drawing of drawing.’