Untitled (Butterfly)
2002 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
Mark Grotjahn
This particular drawing, like many of Grotjahn’s works, presents a decentered single-point perspective. Unlike the traditional vanishing point, the rays here emanate from the surface’s middle and hover around an indefinite and impossible convergence. The resulting fluttering of the image’s sections animates the drawing in relationship to its named subject, the butterfly. The work also suggests the shimmer and movement of the insect’s wings around an inconsequential and difficult-to-see body.
Mark Grotjahn’s paintings and drawings are light-hearted takes on geometric abstraction. Many of his works use his “butterfly model” of skewed perspectival lines. These images conjure both infinite transcendence and the graphic design of book covers or psychedelic posters. Additionally, by referring to these pieces directly as butterflies, Grotjahn complicates the initially abstract appearance of the works, but without allowing them to completely become representations of their namesakes either.
