Since the beginning of her career in the 1970s, drawing has been part of Trisha Brown’s working process as an artist. She has used movement to generate graphic works and used drawing to catalyze action. Although Brown has previously exhibited her drawings in America and Europe, this will be the first time that she makes monumental drawings in a public context, transforming the process itself into a performance. With paper located on the floor and charcoal and pastel held by hands as well as feet, Brown utilizes a movement vocabulary that she has perfected over four decades as a dancer, choreographer, and opera director. The drawings intimately reflect the dancer’s experience of her athletic body in motion, and record the subtle activities of a master mover, who works, as she says, “between muscle, music and muse.” Made by the synthesis of drawing and dance, dancing and drawing, these graphic works will be installed in the gallery during the performance and remain on view.
Trisha Brown emerged from a moment of intense artistic cross-fertilization in the 1960s. Embracing everyday movement rather than stylized forms, she performed in the alternative spaces of Greenwich Village and SoHo—as well as on rooftops and literally on museum walls—developing a signature movement vocabulary. Her recent highly celebrated work is an extension of the remarkably interdisciplinary and collaborative approach that has characterized her career.