The Shadow - Make It Happen A new GIF by artist Ram Samocha.

Plus Minus - Drawing installation by Ram Samocha  

SWEETSHOP window exhibition space, July 2020 31 Lansdown Place, Lewes, UK http://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/sweetshop/

This is how we are now “Plus Minus”. We have been staying at home for over four months, the future remains uncertain. We can enjoy spending valuable time with the ones we love but there is so much confusion and uncertainty all around.

As an artist, I find myself bringing two practices together: drawing and performance. For some time I have been doing drawings as performance works. This has gathered into quite an international community of artists and events that I have organised, drawing on the legacy of this practice form the 1970's, situated in current developments and practices. For a year now I have taken the remnants of my performance drawings and reworked them in my studio. I like contrasting the marks that were made in front of a live audience to the slow, reflective, durational process of making these drawings in the studio.

When approached to display my work in the SWEETSHOP window, I immediately identified the performative aspect of the windows exhibition project. I like the way that people don’t have to enter a gallery space or a room in order to look at the art, but instead the art looks at them and they can choose to stop and pay attention to it, or not. It seems a relevant way to show and display a work in this period and this situation in which we are currently living.

The work showing in the windows - A large drawing that was done in one go at a night of performances (Lab451London, 2015) and some sketches that were made in the studio. I have thought of mixing my live performance practice and my studio work, but this time I chose to reverse the process, presenting the many small-size preparation drawings, done in the studio, with a final document of a performance, this single large drawing, created by the performance. The energy of creating something live with many people around watching is so different from the solo work produced in the studio, yet visually they remain connected and related to one another. I'm interested in the visual continuity between the two, done with such a different energy, in a different time and space. I liked the possibility of returning to and reflecting on a previous body of work, while finding challenging ways to combine, display and create a relevant new dialogue, and a conversation between past and future. This dialogue seems relevant for now – especially for artists and live performers for whom live events and exhibitions have been arrested.

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Home Is Where The Art Is - Drawing and sound performance by artist Ram Samocha. Brighton, UK, 6 May 2018.

Ram Samocha_Keep an Eye, 2014. Grüntaler9, Berlin, Germany.