Hanns Schimansky or listening to a drawing…

When we look at Hanns Schimansky’s drawings, a vast silence descends and time stops as if at the end of some exceptional concert…

This exhibition presents the latest drawings and a selection of representative works from recent years. It’s the first time the work of the German artist Hanns Schimansky is shown in Lisbon.

Throughout the years, Hanns Schimansky has been patiently developing an original form of visual poetics that stems from a strong ethical stance: a deliberate choice to make drawing his exclusive practice.

His work is divided technically and stylistically into three distinct groups:  graphite pencil drawings on prepared paper, foldings in which vibrant colour emerges as a structural element, and Indian ink drawings made with a nib pen.  These “visual melodies” have inspired several generations of new artists and collectors.

Given the limits of a blank sheet of paper, often prepared and usually folded vertically and horizontally, the first step is to select the material to suit the type of surface: acrylic paint or ink applied with a brush or a metal nib, pencil or pastel, to mention only those that Schimansky most frequently uses.

Our eyes can follow exploratory lines that move and spread like rhizomes across the surface of the paper.  In some cases, we can virtually hear the sound of this visual-acoustic line, the result of a metal nib filled with ink moving across a more or less rough surface. The drawing/musical score is created by the marks left as the line continues its way through breaks and interruptions.

Hanns Schimansky has shown his work at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, Holland, the Staatliche Kunstalle in Karlsruhe, Germany, the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Neuchâtel, Switzerland and at the Martin-Gropious-Bau and Akademie der Künste in Berlin, Germany.  His work is represented in public collections such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Oslo, the Berlinische Gallery, the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin, the Pinakothek der Modern in Munich and the Morgan Library & Museum Collection in New York.

The Sound of Drawing exhibition is Hanns Schimansky’s third solo exhibition at the Jeanne Bucher Jaeger Gallery and his first at its recently inaugurated venue in Lisbon.