Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Dadi Wirz
American, Swiss; 20th-century
Normal, IL: University Galleries of Illinois State University
62%
Gibraltar in White. 1968. Mixed media on paper
This drawing and its pair in University Galleries’ collection are topographical. This one is the better of the two because it is disaggregated without feeling diffuse, and because it has so successfully integrated Persian script into its landscape elements: the way text behaves visually like land, and land like text, seems natural. Too, the drawing's bluish silvers work well for not being so densely packed, and its one slash of pink commands much more space than the sliver it actually takes up would imply. If this all happens somewhat absent of direction, the fact that this seems to have been a sketchbook page is for the most part a sufficient apology. This is a light work without aspirations to be much more, as the errancy of pretty much every one of its lines suggests. (2024)
Normal, IL: University Galleries of Illinois State University
55%
Les Halles. 1968. Mixed media on paper
The two attempts at integrating the collaged element with the rest of the page — bulbous nippled form at left, stroke of yellow at right — have both too much and not enough to do with the visual language contained in the pasted-on sheet. Therefore, the white space all around this sheet seems more undeployed than pregnant, while the actual composition appears meek. Still, the drawn elements manage to be simultaneously dense and spacious (lots of wiggly linework but comparatively little shading or coloring), and the combination of various sorts of marks is productive if unconsummated. There are several different sorts of surface effects, but all of them somehow lose their particularity. (2024)