TARA GEER: WHEN THE SCAFFOLDING STARTS TO CRUMBLE

 Jason McCoy Gallery is pleased to present a special presentation of new work by Tara Geer.

Comprised of seven separate sheets, 'When the Scaffolding Starts to Crumble' was created to be seen as one installation. Completed during the pandemic, Geer has moved her practice from New York City to Massachusetts, where she has converted a vacant barn into a studio space.  We are pleased to share here the artist's insights about these special drawings as separate works in their own right, and also as a collective installation.

I have had a hard time drawing during the pandemic. Twitter is full of people bursting with creativity, but the world I know - my friends and colleagues and students - is more silent with those who are buried in worries and work. We carry anxiety about what happens next. But drawing has had things to teach me - that I forgot.

Standing in front of a blank page, broadly speaking, there are two paths forward. One we can see down, and one we can’t. Often people go to a blank page with a full mind: from the moment before we start drawing we have a vision of what our drawing might be. The image may not be perfectly detailed, but it is present enough to give the assurance of knowing where one is headed - the solidity of a known, visible path to walk.

The other way is blind. It is on this path artists and scientists often find themselves. Giacometti wrote: “When I make my drawings... the path traced by my pencil on the sheet of paper is, to some extent, analogous to the gesture of a man groping his way in the darkness.” Poet Denise Levertov, writes that: “It is to hunt a white deer in snowy woods.” Physicist, and one of the early vision scientists, Hermann Von Helmholtz, wrote: “I had to compare myself with an Alpine climber, who, not knowing the way, ascends slowly and with toil, and is often compelled to retrace his steps because his progress is stopped.” This direction is often about opening up to and making sense of the strange world that lies in front of us. Theoretical physicist, Richard Feynman, explains: “Our imagination is stretched to the utmost, not, as in fiction, to imagine things which are not really there, but just to comprehend those things which are there.” I imagine it like an estuary where the world, and what you have to hear it with, wash over each other in brackish salt and riptides.

In drawing, in normal times, I was comfortable with the blind path. My curiosity, in the familiar solitude of my studio, unfolded easily enough, listening to the world around me. In the past year, I stepped backwards though. When the world feels less safe, no longer even familiar, when we are struggling to get through the days, how then do I also step out onto a blind path? And the known path never interested me.

But drawing is a concrete practice, a simple act of paper and charcoal. And the anxiety and the questions fly off at tangible, absorbing, specific work. I set up a place to draw in my parents barn. My drawings nudged me. They reminded me that I have practiced, with so many blank pages, choosing a blind path. Not knowing where I am going. Drawing reminds me how to reach into the things I don’t have words for, don’t recognize, may doubt, and scratch and scrape and feel them onto the page. This world does not feel safe to me, probably to most of us. So I embarked on the series of drawings as investigations into when the scaffolding starts to crumble. What surprised me, though, was how alive the world here is, down this blind path-- how muscled and full of running motion and strength. That was what my drawings could only teach me in the act of making them - we have been down this path before, and we can grope, and retrace, and scrabble our way well enough.

- Tara Geer

 Virtual Artist Talk with Tara Geer

Sunday, March 14th, 2021
12pm PST / 3pm EST / 9pm Continental Europe

Please join us for a conversation with the artist Tara Geer, who will address her most recent body of work entitled
When The Scaffolding Starts to Crumble, moderated by Stephanie Buhmann.
The event will be hosted via Zoom and is free and accessible internationally to all.

Registration required by Saturday, March 13th: amanda@jasonmccoyinc.com

Please note the invitation link will be sent the evening prior to the event.
All  Virtual Artist Talks are recorded and  archived on our YouTube Channel.