Gerhard Mayer: Organic Virtual Aseptic Lines

I find it much more interesting to show the energy flow and the relationship of an object to its surroundings than to show the object as such.

German artist Gerhard Mayer’s drawings are created within the parameters of seven strict rules. Using drafting pens and an elliptical stencil, he draws curving parallel lines that, among other requirements, cannot intersect, cannot become complete ellipses or mere points, and must always lie on the horizontal. This exhibition presents Mayer’s newest drawings, including those in black ink only, and those using multi-colored inks.

The rules for the drawings came about accidentally, through Mayer’s experiments with the elliptical stencils he had used as a carpenter’s apprentice. While exploring whether the aesthetics of drafting could be used to express his artistic ideas, he noticed that he was following identifiable procedures. When written down, they looked like game rules. What he discovered, and continues to discover, is that despite, or rather because of, such a restrictive system, the visual possibilities actually multiply drawing after drawing.

Mayer’s interest in quantum physics becomes apparent in the visual outcome of the drawings. Like measuring devices used by scientists to illustrate invisible matter and phenomena, the repetitive accumulation of lines appears to depict dynamic energy fields or atomic pathways. Mayer’s “organic” rules parallel scientific theories that have identified a systematic set of laws behind almost everything in the universe. And these rules, rather than limiting and dogmatic, lead to endless and astonishing possibilities.