General Assembly presents Byline, an exhibition bringing together the worlds of Atticus Wakefield, Susan Kellaway and Raymond Pettibon.
Each artist shares a commitment to the line as a wayfinder for the work. The marks are bold and unapologetic, directing the images forward without definite outcomes; the work is guided by the line. The three artists each establish a visual language obedient to its own internal logic. In Pettibon’s work, the line is brash and unruly; scratchy ink marks and scrawled text show sarcastic and absurd scenes of Americana. His line and language jostle for space and hierarchy. The artist said in a 2017 interview that his irreverent line “started as a porcupine, but became my dog.” In Wakefield’s paintings, wiry, lyrical cables twist and cut through one another, building a dense network of mark-making from which figures and landscapes emerge and dissolve. Bodies are porous, destabilized, and continuous with the world around them. They are neither linear nor illustrative, but experiential: rhythmic, muscular, and charged with a tension between precision and chaos.