Stitching Together the
Past’s Hopeful Future
Community Center
2009, ink and tape on
paper, 94½ x 127¾.
All artwork this article
collection the artist.
German-born artist Björn Meyer-Ebrecht
creates large ink-wash drawings of
buildings on sheets of paper he tapes
together to pull the viewer into a past
that never was. | b y B o b B a h r
B
jörn Meyer-Ebrecht
projects images of postwar
German buildings on his
studio wall, then draws from
them on sheets of white paper of
various sizes, using ink washes to create a large, tapestrylike representation
of the scene. The images come from
architecture and cultural books from
decades ago. When enlarged and projected, these found images are fuzzy
and ambiguous, which allows Meyer-Ebrecht to
add a significant amount of personal interpretation to the scenes he re-creates. “It’s important
for me to use the projector because it ties into
photography—another very straightforward way
of putting an image down on paper,” the artist
explains. “But I’m not going for Photorealism;
that doesn’t interest me as a process. I use the
projector only to place everything. Then I take the
projector away and start working by what I see on
the paper. It’s like darkroom work—I slowly see
the image emerge.”
As he draws, Meyer-Ebrecht interprets every
square inch of the projection, which he describes
as a somewhat intuitive process of getting to understand
the image. The resulting image thus reflects the artist’s
feelings about the subject, which are worth discussing.
Most of the photographs he uses show public buildings
from the 1950s and 1960s before they were opened to the
public. The artist is interested in this moment after a building has been completed but before it has been used. He
also finds that these buildings can reveal a lot about how
the society that built it viewed the present and the future.
Meyer-Ebrecht says the buildings he depicts suggest a sort
of utopia, or at least idealism. “They are not yet broken in,” he
says. “In some photos you even see the remnants of construction. I need the purity and the hope of the space. I almost
don’t want to know what went on later.” He describes them as
78 DRAWING
“I want to present the
potential for a story,
with the viewer in it. I
want viewers to have a
very direct relationship
with the building.”
— Björn Meyer-Ebrecht
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WINTER 2011 79
The Speech
Reading Room
2008, ink and tape on
paper, 69¾ x 100.
2006, ink and tape on
paper, 82¾ x 57¼.
empty stages or sets for movies, ready for a story to begin. “I
don’t want to spell it out, but I do want to present the potential
for a story, with the viewer in it,” he says. “I want viewers to
have a very direct relationship with the building.”
The buildings are modern, often made of poured
concrete, and consist largely of big geometric shapes that
are stacked and jutting out in a way that draws in the
viewer. The buildings may have expressed a sentiment of
their time, but Meyer-Ebrecht’s drawings of them express
the rather different sentiments of our time. These buildings are not of our era, and their optimism contrasts with
today’s irony and cynicism. The artist’s avoidance of color,
which reflects the black-and-white photography from which
the images originate, makes the viewer consider the role of
nostalgia in our viewing—although not any nostalgia on
the artist’s part. If anything, he is nostalgic for something
that perhaps never was, the specter of possibility.
Meyer-Ebrecht’s use of varying paper sizes, taped together to make a sprawling whole, produces negative space
where sheets don’t line up. There are holes in our vision.
We see the texture of the wall through these holes and are
reminded that we are looking at an art object. The artist
80 DRAWING
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says the gaps between sheets serve several other important
functions. “Is it coming together or falling apart?” asks
the artist. “It reflects the fragmentation of today’s mood. I
don’t want to think of it in a morbid way. Besides the holes,
these pieces are bringing the image together. The holes
are not only missing parts but also a result of how all the
sheets of paper are taped together, creating something.”
Meyer-Ebrecht also points out that by having sheets pieced
together in an irregular fashion, holes and all, it expands
the piece beyond the traditional shape and scale of a drawing and allows the piece to interact with the room around it.
The scale of the work is imposing, yet it allows the
viewer to put him or herself into the scene. “I made the
seesaw rings in Playground so that they can relate to your
body,” he says. “I want you to want to grab onto them.” The
scale of objects and structural features determines the size
of the drawing, and Meyer-Ebrecht adjusts the enlargement of the image until elements in the projection on the
wall feel the right size. He then creates the support for the
piece—a process that can take as long as two days—by
taping pieces of graphic-design paper together with the
same clear archival adhesive tape that librarians use on
WINTER 2011 81
left
Photos: Bob Bahr
The uneven
surface of the
artist’s pieces
is evident
when viewed
from the side.
Meyer-Ebrecht
says he
embraces the
buckling and
curling that the
paper undergoes when a
wet media is
applied to it.
Top
Meyer-Ebrecht with his piece Playground, in his Brooklyn studio.
above
Meyer-Ebrecht creates roughly 10 solutions of water and ink to give him various values
with which to draw. He color-codes them so that he can work quickly.
far left
Sketched ideas, notices for art shows, and other images are tacked to the wall in MeyerEbrecht’s studio.
About the Artist
Björn Meyer-Ebrecht was born and raised in Germany and attended art school in Berlin before settling in the United States in
2000. He earned an M.F.A. degree from Hunter College, in New
York City. For more information, visit http://meyer-ebrecht.com.
82 DRAWING
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WINTER 2011 83
School Yard
2008, ink and tape on paper,
77 x 70.
Pool
2007, ink and tape on paper,
56¾ x 109¼.
books. Meyer-Ebrecht uses very white, smooth paper that is
designed to take a large amount of ink well.
The pieces are not taped with exactitude—MeyerEbrecht instead concentrates on getting the right shape
of the overall piece, paying attention to the fact that small
pieces of paper mean more tape and that the tape will
resist the ink washes, so heavily taped areas will have fewer
marks. “There will be areas of clusters of small pieces of
paper, and I know that there will be a lot of tape around
there, so the image will almost become invisible, whereas
big pieces of paper will create areas with a lot of information,” the artist says. “And that’s OK—the arrangement of
the paper has to work as an abstract piece. The problems
are similar to those of abstract art, where you add a little
more here, a little less there.” The piece hangs from multiple pins at the top and at other areas where the weight of
the piece calls for more stability.
Meyer-Ebrecht roughly draws the shapes onto the paper
using a graphite pencil, then he begins layering ink wash
using approximately 10 different mixtures of black Pelikan
ink and water. The lightest mixture is nearly pure water,
and the darkest is almost pure ink. The liquid makes the
paper buckle, and drips occur. The artist has come to embrace all these signs of his hand, even leaving the original
84 DRAWING
graphite drawing to show through in some places. As the
layers of ink are laid down, the image comes into focus.
Are they drawings? “Many people question that, but I
consider them drawings,” Meyer-Ebrecht says. “Drawings
are more intimate than paintings, and more temporary.
Paper suggests that it doesn’t have the longevity of canvas,
and in terms of imagery, that’s important. These images
fade, they age, get watermarks or stains.”
If this process sounds fairly intuitive considering how
representational the images are, it may be a function of
Meyer-Ebrecht’s past. He describes his art education in
Berlin as advocating work that comes “out of your belly,”
and his training at Hunter College, in New York City,
focused on developing a language to speak about one’s
work and a methodical approach that embraces conceptualism. “Coming to New York, I could reformulate my
ideas of creating art,” he says. “I still feel that I work
instinctually, but it was good to have both experiences.”
His studio is in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn,
an area full of creative freedom and artistic expression.
It is here that an artist can freely wed postwar Berlin
with modern yearnings, black-and-white representational images with imagination, and the instinctual with
the conceptual. ■
Reprinted from Drawing Winter: Copyright © 2011 by Interweave Press, LLC. All rights reserved.
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