Anne Lindberg’s six new monumental drawings embody the seamless relationship between the pace of her step and the evolution of the drawing. Citing a long tradition ranging from Henri Rousseau to William Wordsworth, Robert Walser and Immanuel Kant, the work in this exhibition expounds the relationship of deep thinking and composing with time spent walking. As thousands of lines are pulled across a pliant mat board while walking, an under-layer of graphite builds a matrix into which color is overlaid and embedded.
Lindberg’s work has a highly atmospheric inclination towards the rhythmic layers of luminous colors. By holding on to a gradient light, a slow and telling use of tone finds meaning. Essentially, this is the documentation of the sun in context, with all its various capacities, eliciting qualities ranging from the emotional to the tangential. These drawings present a visceral and metaphysical weight, which carries with it a quiet reserve, emotional power and formal abstraction. Here, Lindberg uncovers an alchemy that can exist in everyday life.
Walking as I stand also features a functional 18-inch high, 50-foot long wooden sculpture placed in the gallery, literally and conceptually creating an axis from which to experience the drawings. The form, situated perpendicular to the vertical lines that compose the drawings, is a nod towards the architectural influence prevalent in the work while also affecting a corporeal experience for the visitor. Bisecting the space longitudinally, the form at once encourages walking (along, around, over) and contemplating (sitting). This physical line creates a real time somatic moment where the visitor becomes the axes fulcrum – somewhere between 2 and 3 dimensions.
Lindberg understands her studio practice as a paced and daily conversation with place, in body and mind. From her studio in the Hudson River Valley, elements of light, space, and time coalesce from this mindset. As these drawings generate fundamental questions about time, causality and sequence, language is utilized as a compass to conjure meaning. The titles of the new work are fragments of language, lines of published poetry or essay from writers with whom Lindberg finds connection and alliance.
Cumulatively, walking as I stand presents an experience that conjoins personal and abstract voices with a new sense of profundity. Here, from a deep place within herself, Lindberg speaks in an essential way to the human condition.