Graphite becomes sentient in its imperfection. A pencil traces over paper, giving way to fibers in the surface. It changes over the short time it takes to draw the line; becoming blunt, shifting tone. In these ever-evolving lines, the artist is preserved. Mood and personality are contained in the weight and the brevity of the mark. Ree Morton’s drawings are no exception, and her pencil sketches at the Drawing Center hand us the keystone to understanding her work.

The first room in the Drawing Center is devoted to Morton’s drawings. Small in scale and sparse in content, the line becomes monumental in importance. Morton is quoted saying that, “three ideas interest me almost equally: structure, geometric shapes, modular repetitions, grids; light which can glow and be reflected, be absorbed; and surface which, in the case of the drawings, means integrating the quality of the paper with the marks made on it.” Morton’s pencil work explores these three themes extensively. Each sketch takes a singular motif and examines it by means of opposing forces. Light duels with dark, empty space wrestles with occupied. The pencil with its subtle intricacies is an expressive force itself and an intriguing tension arises from the these three instruments converging. Simple patterns flit across pages and feel, somehow, voyeuristic in nature. They describe the psyche of the artist uncomfortably well, but yet remain indefinite in their terminology.

As you enter the second room, pencils are ditched for blunt crayons. A line of large drawings pull from an ancient botanical treatise and reference, so the informative text claims, grand human themes such as life and death. But the works are inaccessible, the meaning impossibly concealed behind unappealing wax lines. The room is almost entirely devoted to the botanical project and would be a complete disappointment if not for her final sculpture, Devil Chaser. In this she incorporates the themes she had been exploring in her crayon pieces but ditches crayons and takes up wire. Her lines feel similar to the lines in her pencil drawings, more personal. They coax the viewer into the piece and with organic-looking draping give enough texture to convince one to linger. The viewer is able to experience an intuitive understanding and connection with the piece that is impossible with the crayon-drawings.

The show continues with varying degrees of success, worth seeing for the odd moment when Morton takes a line and skillfully makes it express more than itself. In this, she speaks in a universal tongue. As she said, “the mental pictures are always changing. You can’t make them concrete. There is no frame of reference, story line, or location.” They become timeless.

Ree Morton: At the Still Point of the Turning World, The Drawing Center in New York, October 2009