The Fourth Biennale for Drawing in Israel, initiated by the Jerusalem Artists’ House, has been held since 2001, and has spread out across five galleries in central Jerusalem. The concept for the present exhibition initially evolved from a dialogue with the three previous exhibitions, in which the state of contemporary drawing in Israel has been fully plotted: the diverse spectrum of themes, styles and techniques, indicated the abundant expressions of drawing and its validity as a major, vibrant medium with boundaries that today cross into new fields including installation, photography or literature.

This pluralism posits the need to narrow the gaze and focus on the medium’s most quintessential, traditional characteristic, the line, as an autonomous component in the drawing practice, and even more significantly – on its myriad manifestations as a tangle or thicket of webs. The traced tangle introduces a position which sees the world as a spreading expanse of screens, grids, and rhizomes. The idiom of the thicket employs an abstract-modernist syntax that has been used in art for the past hundred years.

Curator: Tamar Manor-Friedman