Drawing 34 2000

Teo González made Drawing 34, using ink on paper, and it kind of messes with my head in a good way. I mean, at first glance, it's just a small square of dense marks floating on a big white page, but those little marks, those specks, they're doing so much work! Up close, you can see the subtle variations in pressure. It’s like a constellation of tiny universes. The texture of the paper itself becomes part of the drawing. That handmade quality has a big impact, right? There is something so simple, so human in the labor of mark-making, and the contrast between the density of the small square and the openness of the white space around it, gives it this quiet, powerful tension. The idea of obsessive, repetitive mark-making reminds me of Agnes Martin, who was also interested in the quiet power of repetition and simple forms. Ultimately, what González is doing here is making us look, really look, and in that looking, find something profound in the simplest of gestures.