Drawn – Christian Schwarzwald

The drawing is the medium of Christian Schwarzwald’s (b. Salzburg, Austria, 1971; lives and works in Vienna and Berlin) art. Employing a wide range of techniques, he draws on diverse image sources and harnesses aspects of reproducibility, the irritation provoked by built-in defects, and the illusion of three dimensions. Schwarzwald’s work embodies an expanded conception of graphic art: sketches, notes, artist’s editions, and paintings coalesce in ensembles in space; the individual sheet—as a signifier—is transmuted into a component of a complex semiotic system charting visual realms. Pursuing an analytical approach, Schwarzwald thus creates an encyclopedic world of drawing.