Untitled 2017

This drawing by EtchingRoom1 presents a building facade in monochromatic ink. It’s so methodically, almost obsessively rendered that you can imagine the artist sitting with their pens, filling each tiny box with grey. The gridded facade might reflect a certain modern architectural blandness, or perhaps it’s a symbolic rendering of urban life, where individual units are stacked together, differentiated only by light and shadow, or the occasional balcony. The building’s blocky presence recalls Sol LeWitt’s minimalist structures, but in this case, there is a handmade quality to the repetition, and its irregularities add a layer of human touch to the work. You can imagine the artist, EtchingRoom1, considering the geometry of buildings, and the material qualities of cityscapes, not only their artistic predecessors.