Roland Flexner: New Sumi Ink Drawings

Roland Flexner is known for his delicate and precise works on paper, from graphite drawings of skulls, contorted faces, and ripples of water to more recent “bubble” drawings involving ink, soap, and the resulting bubble that bursts onto paper.

Flexner’s newest works are evocative, undulating abstractions based on the Japanese art of suminagashi. During an extended residency in Japan, Flexner was introduced to this ancient decorative tradition, involving a highly refined, skillfully crafted form of ink, or sumi, and water. Sumi is floated on water in a tray, and manipulated into shapes even as it moves on its own. Paper is dipped onto the surface of the water to transfer the image; in the few seconds before it dries, Flexner can alter the image in various ways, with a brush or by tilting, blowing on, or blotting the ink.

The resulting works possess a sense of deep pictorial space and great complexity, and conjure up numerous visual associations: rocky landscapes, fungus, ice-encased trees, patterns of erosion. They could almost be mistaken for photographs by the rich black and slightly granular, silvery texture of the ink, and the sharp “focus” of the image. While the tiny, precise gestures of the artist are a crucial element in the process, these works inevitably derive from the vagaries of the materials and their reaction to the quality and motion of the air, the currents of the water, and the force of gravity, and thereby defer ultimately to chance and nature, but with the most astonishing, seductive results.