Showing from 20 October 2024 to 2 February 2025 ‘Drawing to lose yourself in’ The art of drawing is almost as old as humanity itself, but it is only in the past decade that it has truly been acknowledged as an art form in its own right. As art that deserves a place of its own on the museum stage. By opting first and foremost to give their drawings monumental dimensions, the artists featured in Size Matters make their art impossible to ignore. It is emphatically visible. All the works in the exhibition measure at least two metres in height or width – larger than most people themselves. The biggest drawing in the exhibition is no less than 11 metres wide! Dimensions that demand a huge physical as well as mental effort on the maker’s part. In Size Matters, Museum MORE focuses on this bold yet lesser-known aspect of contemporary, international art and on the limitless ambition of contemporary artists.
But it’s not just about sheer ‘wall power’. While the intense physical presence of a larger-than- human artwork can be overwhelming, the exhibition also highlights the variety of the subject matter explored by the artists, from immersive natural landscapes to disorienting virtual or dystopian realities. From critical visions of current issues, such as war, ecocide, power and propaganda, to the idiosyncratic nature of personal memories and universal human emotions.
Themes that benefit from a substantial scale. Something that can impress without intimidating. That can cause our surroundings to disappear for a moment. We are drawn in closer and closer, embraced, and invited to discover all the secrets. This is drawing to lose yourself in.
Size Matters includes work by both pioneering drawing artists and young practitioners, who apply a multitude of techniques. Some are pieces done with traditional materials like charcoal, graphite, chalk, watercolour and ink, others use modern means such as ballpoint, marker pen, iron filings, sandpaper or Stanley knifes. Paper is frequently the support, in the traditional manner, but scratched-open museum board, painter’s canvas, gossamer-thin cheesecloth and magnetic paper all feature too. The variety of applications and manifestations offered by these materials testifies to the makers’ ingenuity and desire to experiment. A figurative visual language with immense attention to detail links the works stylistically, reflecting Museum MORE’s mission to present modern realism in all its guises.
For centuries, the art of drawing consisted mostly of small, intimate or convenient ‘preliminary studies’. Drawings served chiefly as sketches when preparing a painting, sculpture or building, or as quick visual notes to capture a fleeting impression to work up later in the studio. They were also the foundation of artistic training: only once you could correctly draw human anatomy, light, shadow and perspective were you allowed to learn another medium. It is precisely this
fundamental role that makes drawing the medium that brings us closest to the artist; it is here that their individual thoughts and hand are felt to be most readily legible. In this way, Size Matters brings the contemporary observer close to one of the deepest foundations of visual art, offering a journey of discovery through a grandiose and fantastic universe.
The exhibition was organized by MORE’s Senior Curator Marieke Jooren, in collaboration with guest curator and artist Raquel Maulwurf.
Artists
Danja Akulin, Agatha van Amée, Charles Avery, Hans Op de Beeck, Robbie Cornelissen, Aymeraude du Couëdic, Nicolas Daubanes, Pietsjanke Fokkema, Kepa Garraza, Cathelijn van Goor, Anouk Griffioen, Katrin Günther, David Haines, Raquel Maulwurf, Carlijn Mens, Radenko Milak, Anne Muntges, Jans Muskee, Erik Odijk, James Pustorino, Jacobien de Rooij, Amélie Scotta, Dom Simon, Lise Sore, Renie Spoelstra, Rinus Van de Velde, Levi van Veluw, Hans de Wit.
Raquel Maulwurf
The Spanish-Dutch artist Raquel Maulwurf (1975) was born in Madrid and lives and works in Amsterdam. Her charcoal drawings spring from Maulwurf’s fascination with humanity’s urge for destruction: the devastation of our own living environment through conflict and ecocide. ‘I take images from war and other archives and from the international news and rework them until all that remains is the essence of the event. Abrasive and paradoxical images of beauty and destruction, attraction and repulsion.’
