IMAGE:23 2019

Thomas Riesner made this small ink drawing, IMAGE:23, on paper with what seems to be a very simple kind of pen. There's a rawness and immediacy to the marks; it’s all line, no tone, but some of the lines have been drawn over, giving them a shadowy depth. Look at the head, or is it a mask? The lines radiate out from the edge of the face, giving it an almost comical appearance, like a sunburst. But what's really interesting to me is the nose, or maybe it's a beak? It’s this big, blank shape with a vertical line down the middle and these little lines emanating from it, like some sort of strange antenna. The artist seems to be working from memory to represent the emotion he wanted to portray. This kind of quick, expressive drawing reminds me a bit of Picasso's later work, where he was trying to capture the essence of a thing with just a few simple lines. Art is like a visual language, constantly evolving and changing over time.