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Art Surprise is a project run by the artist Juan Petry. It is an initiative that supports emerging contemporary artists working or living in Europe. The concept is simple. There are 70 units of refurbished old-school cigarette vending machines placed in galleries and museums in Germany, Spain and Austria. Instead of selling cigarettes, now they share small boxes (in a size of a cigarette pack) each containing one original artwork from one of the participating 290 artists in any chosen category. Here you can find my 120 pieces that were produced to be part of this network.
To find out more about how I came across this project, see the blog entry here.
The title of each drawing consists of 3 words. This is connected to the map and app called 'What 3 Words'. The app creators divided the world into 3 metre squares and gave each square a unique combination of three words in order to help people share their exact location.
After finalising each drawing, I take a note of these three words where I drew it. This becomes a title of the piece and an opportunity for the person receiving this drawing to see the origin of it.
Each drawing starts with a walk. If on the way a certain view catches my attention, I take the surface print of either the building I am drawing, or the street, using the frottage technique. Then I use this imprinted piece of paper to draw on. Each sketch takes no more than 5 - 8 minutes. The outcome is a short trip for the viewer to an unknown place through visual drawing, photo, video, map exploration and physical print representation.
Here in this page every drawing is accompanied by a photo from the view, a link to the 'What 3 Words' website to see the exact location and an additional link to the Instagram page where I have published a video of taking the surface print for each drawing.
These sketches are in a complete contrast with my usual drawing technique. A single line, objects stripped back of details, trying to emphasize only the most important - scale, viewers point and rhythm. It is a process of finding the balance between keeping it minimal and not removing too much to lose the character. What you see is a 120 drawing exploration of this technique. Nevertheless, they are intending to serve the same purpose as all the other drawings; to take you, as the viewer, on an unexpected short journey to a place that you have possibly never heard of. This specific collection is mainly from my journey in Spain, which forms part of my backpacking travels.