Seismic
A solo exhibition from 2014
V1 Gallery
Can you reveal a bit more about the meaning of Seismic..?
Central to the show is a series of pencil on paper drawings made during a road trip across the US. I call this series the Scroll Drawings, and they consist of one large drawing measuring 152x338cm (133×60 inches), made on various stationary locations across the US, and six smaller drawings measuring 1O0x4Ocm (40×16 inches), which I did from the passenger seat, my wife at the wheel, while crossing the North American continent. I had to invent a method that would enable me to do the work on the road. So I came up with the idea of drawing on a tube when working in the car, scrolling my way through the larger roll of paper. Working while traveling, with bumps in the road and cracks in the floor affected the flow of the line, making the drawings topographical maps of the journey itself. On the road with my hand working through the paper like a seismograph, I discovered a new kind of plasticity which is the epicenter of my upcoming show, hence the title: Seismic
Juxtapoz Magazine
Read the interview with Henrik Haven in the magazine below:
Black and white is nighttime and outer space. Black and white is the ultimate opposition, the purest contrast. Colors are everything in between. I can easily imagine that we, as humans, in some primordial way, absorb black-and-white works of art differently than colored ones. I would say that, most probably, they defy cultural barriers differently. Maybe because of their simplicity and silhouette style contrast, they might well take an alternate route through our brain. Passing through our reptilian brain on their way first, making the impact more fundamental.
From the book “Black & White” interviewed by Evan Pricco
I draw in an almost sculptural manner, and my expression is of a topographical nature…
With the paper rolled around a tube, the images emerged as if printed by an inkjet printer, one horizontal line after another…
Most kids stop drawing at some point, maybe because they see that grownups generally don’t really draw anymore…
Business Insider
Read the short interview with Zoë Miller via the link below:
I started drawing like a human seismograph from the passenger seat of a moving car, with my wife at the wheel. It was during a road trip across the United States in 2013. With the paper rolled around a tube, the images emerged as if printed by an inkjet printer, one horizontal line after another. While the roll of paper rotated on my lap, parallel to the spinning wheels, every bump in the road affected the flow of lines, making the drawings topographical maps of the journey itself.
Before crossing the North American continent, I had been searching for a way to break the constraints of linear hatching and cross-hatching. These techniques worked well for portraying depth but separated the background from the figure in an abrupt and undesirable manner. In the series of drawings I did leading up to the trip to the US I found a way. At first I drew caves and ripples on water, giving each line more and more individuality. The breakthrough came just as I began my third drawing. I started with a straight line from left to right, running from the edge of the paper horizontally towards the center. After running for a while, the line rose slightly and fell back down in a u-turn, forming the shape of an eye, and continued returning parallel with itself to the edge of the paper, just below where it had started. A new way of drawing was born, background and foreground had been united. Instead of lines acting as borders, separating inside from outside, I started stacking lines one by one. Every line with its own characteristic flow but still corresponding and relating to the previous line. In a seismic wave, drawing had come a step closer to sculpting.
After returning from our journey, I have continued utilizing this sculptural approach in my latest series of drawings. On the road I discovered a new kind of plasticity resembling phenomena found in nature, like the formations in stalactite caves and the growth rings found in trees. New shapes protrude the paper with an abundance of lines. Cross sections slice through hidden objects, leaving their paths on their surfaces, emphasizing three-dimensional spaces and breaking open new territory.