Line Studies: Standards and Postulates

This thesis essay examines a drawing discourse that is not defined by graphite on paper but rather by an axiomatic construction of space that entails a distinct and interwoven relation between line and surface. In order to examine this formal relationship between line and surface, and the conceptual repercussions, I will address relevant work from my own studio practice, theoretical discourse, contemporary examples and historical precedent. Specifically concentrating on Mel Bochner (and the conceptual drawing practices of the 1960s) Francis Alÿs and Robin Rhode. The lines considered here cut across grids, reposition objects and direct/obstruct the flow of bodies, they delineate space, cleaving an undefined surface into an object and a ground, and open spaces into bounded areas. Drawing then becomes an apparatus through which to think differently about the surface that is being marked, the world sustaining that mark. The work examined in this thesis has been distilled to lines and line-makers, basic elements and primary structures that can expand to other forms. Here drawing is seen not as a material, but as a stance out of which to make gestures affiliated with a medium that explicitly resists determination. This paper will outline the ambivalent or multi-valent nature of the line: vibrating continually, never being fully one thing or another, never fully mimetic or fully abstract. The work examined seeks to understand the structural nature of lines, how they delineate looking, acting, and create moments of transgression. This thesis asks: how can space be constructed along alternate base lines? And what changes when we are asked to look at the standard itself instead of being corralled into seeing along the standard?