The Line In Time
The Drawings of Karine Falleni
Gestures emerge from the body. A physical repertoire is instinctual to some people. Yet the gesture does not belong to any one creative discipline. It is a palpable expression which is innately human—a self conscious act in which an interval of reflection accompanies whatever results from the gesture, whether that is a document, an artifact, or merely a memory enabled to aid in the construction of the self.
In the drawings of Karine Falleni, we are brought into a conversation between the body and the dimensional characteristics of its surroundings—what some people call “architecture” but which is the sensory impact of any environment, whether natural or man-made. Very often the so-called architecture within which we live and co-exist is in fact an interior model of an exterior world, one free of danger from without. Yet the instinct to create a gesture remains essential. Just as an animal might leave a mark, a person willingly makes a mark, echoing some primal need; having done in regularity, it generates knowledge from its innate richness and diversity. They become a sort of language. In each case we may eventually glean some meaning that’s never named.
Though it’s nearly impossible to glean the synergy of the moment, the overall result is rich with symbolism, Instant and Spatial Thought imply a mass action that occurs so immediately that it expresses a single thought shared across many minds, like a swarm of thrushes, or a school of fish flowing together in deep currents. The gestures that inhabit these works not only set our minds rushing into the moment, but as we move from one image to another, we feel ourselves not only viewing the marks but feeling them, as if they were the skins at the end of our own fingers. This movement across space is like a dance. Works like Interaction, Compress, and Tangle, Untangle guide us through dimensional narratives that only have a rejoinder in myths and dreams. What’s unique to Falleni’s marks is that they remain animated by the primal only. Never at any point do they lapse into a habitual normality, she neither allows herself to climb into higher structures that might infer a theoretical intent, nor does she seek to escape from the marks themselves.
