Untitled (Dancing Black Butterflies, Drawing in 9 Parts)

Mark Grotjahn’s work reinvents visual concepts from the history of painting, taking on well-known tropes ranging from Renaissance perspective to early Pablo Picasso mask paintings. Beginning with the grids and mathematics of traditional perspective, Grotjahn rotates the horizon line to vertical and skews vanishing points. In Untitled (Dancing Black Butterflies), Grotjahn addresses how to present movement in drawing. The work’s title implies motion (dancing), and the black triangular shapes indeed flutter across the sheets as well as inward and outward from the paper. The perspective creates optical illusions, providing room for many perceptions of and points of entry into the work.