This summertime, ALICE BLACK will exist as ‘Hemispheres’; a laboratory space for the study of drawing within contemporary art practice.

The brainchild of London based guest curator and contributing artist Daniel Valentine, the ‘Hemispheres’ lab brings together the work of a cross section of artists at varying stages of their careers for whom drawing is a central creative axis. Exhibitors include Hugo Hagger, Evelina Hägglund, Rafaella Lazarou, Ioanna Mavromichali, Nezliya Muhara, Emma Papworth, Salvatore Pione, Jenkin van Zyl, Grace Woodcock, Rafał Zajko and Daniel Valentine.

The human brain is comprised of two hemispheres - the left and right brain - traditionally pitted as standing in opposition to each other. However, this binary way of defining function serves to divide down the lines of hegemonic epistemologies instead of considering how the opposing parts harmoniously unite to create; the more linear, logical left and the intuitive, fantasy-oriented right. Every image drawn from life must first hit the back of the retina and be made sense of by the brain, bouncing between both hemispheres for a decision to be made about how this will be re-transcribed. 

Drawing is often simply thought of within a binary, reduced to being a purely utilitarian act, a preliminary stepping-stone to a more ‘valuable' outcome. Yet, drawing presents a possibility for the directness of thought to be transcribed onto paper (or less traditional surfaces), emerging as an imprint of the rhizomatic expression of the brain’s hemispheres stripped back from more intense processing. ‘Hemispheres’ explores the expansive possibilities that drawing can stretch to, doing away with the limitations that have been placed on it, and revealing the extent to which it can expand on antiquated notions of thought, expectation and output.

Through the preliminary curation process a clear distinction of approaches to drawing emerged - a spectrum between the mercurial to the methodical, mirroring a hemispheric divide - a line separating one whole yet somehow intricately related and synthesised. Artworks range from the excruciatingly detailed tableau’s of Jenkin van Zyl’s renderings, to the ineffable scrawling of graphite and rust on canvas from Evelina Hägglund, and everything in between. In some senses, these drawings are a literal brain scan, an autopsy of an interior process as much as one that may capture something in the world.

“If the studio were an MRI machine, we hereby present our scans and results, waiting patiently for further analysis. ‘Hemispheres’ does not demand an answer from its spectrum of results but instead opens itself as a space that welcomes further questions and consultation,” says Valentine.