Cecilia de Torres, Ltd. is pleased to present a selection of artists who share both affinities and diversities in their dedication to expanding the possibilities of the line in their work. This exhibition provides the opportunity to view the variety of modes, techniques, and perspectives through which these artists, following in the tradition of Latin American Abstraction, have continued to interpret and adapt their own aesthetic approaches to the linear form.

Besides sharing a background in science and mathematics, Magdalena Fernández and Elias Crespin both create artworks that play with the line through bridging the gap between technology and art; the former, through digital media creating the illusion of destabilized linear movement, the latter, with computer programs that control kinetic wire-grid structures that float in the air as they take on different linear geometric patterns.

Marta Chilindron creates manipulable sculptures that can be maneuvered into multiple combinations, highlighting the artist’s continued exploration of new possibilities for movement, geometry, and the nature of the line. Mariano Dal Verme’s work hovers in between the space separating the line from drawing and sculpture, as he creates linear geometric artworks comprised out of the very graphite leads themselves. Noted for their precise draughtmanship, Gustavo Díaz and Julián Terán both utilize software programs as a platform of departure, yet their works’ final execution are translated hyper-meticulously onto ink on paper by the artists’ hands. Díaz’s layered lines are based on theories of chaos and uncertainty, whilst Terán’s undulating lines are anything but random, and infuse the line with a sense of topographical volume. León Ferrari and Gustavo Bonevardi share an interest in language as both a structural and visual form. While at first glance, Ferrari’s piece may read as his well-known “written drawings,” the undulating lines presented here are rid of any textural reference, and instead waver between negative and positive space. Bonevardi’s drawing, comprised of disintegrating, meaningless letters, take on a repetitive structural form that provokes the viewer’s perception of the line.

Mirtha Dermisache’s artist book, Livre No.4, continues in the tradition of the genre that challenges the conventional book format to become a work of art in itself, one that aims to make artworks interactive, portable, and elicit the viewer’s participation. Livre No.4 is a classic example of Dermisache’s notorious asemic writing: illegible and wordless visual mark-making that is void of any semantic content. The artist’s use of scribbled, repetitive, and acutely gestural lines, create a vacuum of meaning for the reader to discern and interpret. Dermisache’s variations of the line are what leave the viewer hovering in a state between reading and looking.

Marcelo Boullosa and Anna Maria Maiolino both play with the seriality of the line. Boullosa’s lines are ruptured and broken, changing into a labyrinthine maze through the act of repetition and patterning. Each drawing becomes a distinctive structure in and of itself, in which any sense of linearity simply dissolves. Maiolino’s devotion to drawing as a means of self-expression reflects her concern with the creative process itself—incorporating chance, gesture, and action. The lines in her work capture the organic, rhythmic nature of the artist’s hand, revealing her ongoing exploration of the variations of the line. Bringing together works in various mediums, Expanding the Line highlights the commonalities, overlaps, and variances made manifest in the range of the gallery’s contemporary draughtsmen, videographers, and sculptors.