DELINEATION: Nelleke Beltjens, Dominic Di Mare, Jacob El Hanani, Nicole Phungrasamee Fein: Nicole Phungrasamee Fein, Nelleke Beltjens, Dominic Di Mare, Jacob El Hanani

New York Gallery

This exhibition brings together work on paper by four artists using line as a their primary focus.

Nelleke Beltjens’ large-scale ink drawings are made of thousands of minute lines that converge and concentrate at differing rates. The marks seem to swarm across very large sheets of heavy paper. The intersections and their ensuing density or sparseness lend a calculated, map-like quality to the drawings, inviting comparison to celestial, oceanic, and terrestrial spaces as seen from the heavens or the depths of the earth.

Dominic Di Mare’s books are comprised of drawings of layered prismacolor and geometric cuts. Di Mare considers his imagery to be “automatic writing,” a visual language of shapes and lines. “Narratives” are formed and unformed as one is lead, page-by-page, through various permutations. At once two- and three-dimensional, the drawings astonish and delight with their exquisite evolutions on both the “front” and “back” of each page.

Jacob El Hanani uses ink on paper to make hundreds of thousands of lines, repeated over and over. Through this repetition a field is created, usually square in format. Planes of grey appear to undulate and flat spaces become three-dimensional and then convex. El Hanani’s microscopic gestures produce grand patterns.

Nicole Phungrasamee Fein begins with four pencil points that mark a square. Without the aid of a straight edge, she then lays down strokes of watercolor in precisely timed applications. Multiple layers result in paintings of complex, luminous color in a process more akin to weaving than traditional watercolor painting. Each work requires total concentration and must be completed in a single sitting. This intense and painstaking process produces work of astonishing tranquility.