Delightful Beast Makers: Jean-Pierre Gauthier and Arthur Ganson

Drawing Shadows

Jean-Pierre Gauthier's Marqueurs d'Incertitude is the latest work to appear in the Architecture II Gallery. A group of three mechanized "bugs", each attracted to its own wall, are made to move up and down, back and forth, according to some very simple mechanics and motors simply assembled and delightfully integrated into the aesthetic of the wiry but fresh and playful curves and colours of the bugs, which are themselves drawing machines, each fitted with one or two sticks of conte and smudge sticks scribbling, smudging and scratching at the surface of the walls.

Over the course of hours and days, layers of soft conte lines build up one next to the other, one on top of the other. What becomes apparent from the collection of minute affectations on the stark white wall surface is a large and complex tracing of the minutia of the wall surface, "its history", brought to the surface as one drawing but still evolving as long as the bugs keep flailing about.