|
Linda Karshan confines herself to the
traditional medium of drawing. Using mainly pencil, as well as,
turpentine
and brush, as artistic means. Linda Karshan's drawings are not drawings
in the usual sense. Lines receive new
meaning in her works. They are not lines of contours which outline
a certain object and which are subordinate
to it. These lines have become independent, expressing intuitive
emotional and mental processes. Thus the artist
herself does not speak of lines, but of dashes, by which she means
short notations in the form of graphic repre-
sentations, which are not to be seen as isolated abstract letters
or characters, but can be 'read' only in the
context of the finished drawing. Linda Karshan creates her drawings
standing at a table, which bears already the
marks of her intensive work, bent over a large empty piece of paper.
She begins to put her notations at random,
as it seems, which she then continues with utmost concentration
and endurance. There is no given direction.
On the contrary, during the process of work Linda Karshan turns
the paper again and again, while her hand is
drawing. The working processes as such, its beginning and end, cannot
be recognized once the drawing has
been completed.
The works convey a longing for balance and order deeply hidden in
human beings which also implies some kind
of orientation. In their steadiness and repetitions the horizontal
lines convey the same inner balance and stability
as the lines which are interrupted in the middle of the sheet, thus
creating an additional vertical, upright structure
within the drawing. In the finished drawing, the (at first glance)
seemingly arbitrariness of the artistic process shows
both the spontaneously drawn short strokes, and the long-drawn lines.
These turn out to be a system of drawings
developed out of an inner need, which the artist transfers intuitively
with a sure hand and persuasive power to a
piece of paper. Due to her highly refined drawing ability and clearly
structured use of forms Linda Karshan achieves
with a minimum of artistic means, a maximum of intensity and expression,
which the viewer cannot elude. With
each new drawing Linda Karshan requires not only of herself but
also of the viewer to reconsider again and again
the basic structures of our existence, in order to experience something
about what we call the truth.
Excerpt from Drawings By Irene Netta, Munich 1999.
|
