Untitled 2002

This untitled piece was made by Zdzislaw Beksinski, sometime after 1929, using pencil and paper. It's so strange, right? I mean, what even is it? A horse? A weird, lumpy figure? Beksinski's mark-making feels so obsessive, like he’s trying to map some alien landscape. There’s this dense network of lines creating texture and form, the shading looks really intense. Look at the way he builds up the shadows on the ‘back’ of the figure. It reminds me of Art Brut, a raw and immediate kind of artmaking. It is like drawing with your eyes closed – just feeling your way through the process. The lines almost seem to pulse, like the thing is breathing. Beksinski reminds me of Goya, both these artists weren’t afraid to go to some pretty dark places, conceptually. They let ambiguity and multiple interpretations exist, rather than pushing a fixed meaning.