DES MOINES, IA.- Drawing in Space includes the work of three artists and one artist collective: Dave Eppley (New York), Heeseop Yoon (New York), Monika Grzymala (Berlin), and Numen/For Use (Germany, Austria, Croatia) – their first major installation in the U.S. Uniting these artists are explorations of line and space through the creation of large-scale, site specific installations using the novel yet humble material, tape. At the Des Moines Art Center, the artists created works in their chosen locations including the floor of the lobby, the three-story wall of the Kyle J. and Sharon Krause Atrium of the Richard Meier building, the Anna K. Meredith Gallery, and the entire I. M. Pei building.

The labor entailed in making all four installations is integral to understanding the art, so the artists were filmed as they create it. The resulting videos, containing brief interviews and shots of the artists working on site, are on view in the galleries to give those who weren’t able to visit in September a glimpse of how the installations were made.

Dave Eppley uses vinyl sign tape to create colorful lines that often accrue and stratify as they stray from the starting point of the work. His lines boldly take over the galleries in which he works, prompting viewers to reconsider familiar spaces. Monika Grzymala’s works have been described as functioning somewhere between architectural interventions and three-dimensional drawings. Employing black, transparent, and silver reflective tape, Grzymala’s “canvases” are often the empty spaces between the ceiling and the floor or one corner of a room to the other. Heeseop Yoon uses “organizational lines” and black masking tape to explore concepts of perception in her works. Organizational lines are used to help artists structure drawings and are usually erased. Yoon keeps her organizational lines as well as her mistakes and corrections, the lines creating a kinetic energy that purposefully overshadows the subject of her drawings. The artist collective, Numen/For Use, designs architectural structures resembling a cross between spider webs and cocoons made out of transparent tape. Their wondrous installations suspended in mid-air can be enjoyed both inside and out; that is, visitors are invited to crawl into and through the tunnels and cavities of the sculpture.

Drawing in Space is organized by Senior Curator Alison Ferris.