“Tantra Drip Drawings” Tim Hawkinson
The word tantra, Sanskrit for “loom” or “weave,” is a metaphor for Hindu and Buddhist spiritual practices that bring together rituals, texts and teachings to guide understanding of the universe and a person’s place within it.
To create this group of large-scale drawings, Tim Hawkinson constructed an apparatus that functions in much the same way as a tattooist’s needle. Large sheets of paper are mounted on a turntable fixed flat to the wall. Using his contraption, he applies India ink to the paper and allows it to run in straight lines. He then rotates the paper and repeats the process from different angles to construct complex geometric forms that bulge and bend across the picture plane — despite the absence of any curved lines.
Many are uncannily totemic — stylized and fetishistic representations of the human body. Others evoke the geometry and optical effects of Islamic tiling or American quilts. Each, constructed through the ritualistic buildup of lines, is a token of Hawkinson’s idiosyncratic practice.
