Joana P. R. Neves: Following the Indexical Line

Monday, February 26, 2018
6.30pm (free and open to the public)
Residency Unlimited (RU)
360 Court Street (enter the Church through the main entrance)
Brooklyn, NY 11231

RU’s curator in residence, Joana P. R. Neves will discuss her curatorial research that focuses on the intricate relations between drawing and photography.

What happens when the line, a paradigm of drawing and a useful tool to measure, organize and even build, is associated with photography and with concepts? Etienne-Jules Marey wondered if the line existed in nature before his recording machines turned it into the very “language of nature”.

A few decades later, for instance, Alexander Rodchenko meant to start a movement called “Lineism”. Throughout the twentieth century the line has been a paradigm of avant-gardist artistic strategies to represent the world in a more abstract and even conceptual way. Looking at the nineteenth century’s scientific and photographic use of the line enlightens both its importance nowadays and its specificity then, through the revisited notion of the index.

To listen to the video, right click ‘unmute’.

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Joana P. R. Neves is a London-based writer and independent curator. She is currently doing research in Art History at Kingston University. She has worked as a director in prominent commercial galleries (Galerie Chantal Crousel (2003-05), schleicher+lange (2007-09) in Paris and Marlborough Contemporary (2012-13) in London. She has curated several group shows in the Parisian area, amongst which Morel’s Island at CPIF and, more recently The Lynx Knows no Boundaries at the Ricard Foundation in 2015. She also organised solo shows for artists such as Gyan Panchal (2006), Evariste Richer (2007) Reto Pulfer (co-curated with Roven Platform) and Catarina Dias (both in 2015). She is co-founder of the curatorial group Roven Platform with Johana Carrier, Marine Pagès and Diogo Pimentão for which she has co-curated thematic and choreographed soirées and group exhibitions around the medium of drawing. She regularly writes articles for Roven magazine and has written for magazines (Frieze, 02, Le Quotidien de l’Art…) and group or monographic catalogues. Her PhD research focuses on drawing, its machines and its language: “A dialogic study of Etienne-Jules Marey’s graphic and photographic images in relation to contemporary uses of the line and the trace in abstract and conceptual art.

This program is made possible with support from TECHNE.