Capsule Art Reviews: "Drawing in Space"

"Drawing in Space" For his drawing/performance, Marker Head Marker at Lawndale Art Center, Daniel Adame encased his head in a giant chunk of plaster shaped like a huge piece of chalk. He then made a drawing on a blackboard hung on the gallery wall. The piece is a part of this group exhibition by J Hill. It was, by all accounts, an amazing performance and one that people are still talking about — even people who usually hate performance art. As a visual thing, the resulting drawing is a large, halting and vaguely Twombly-esque spiral scribble. In itself it's nothing to write home about, but as a record of this guy moving the chunk of plaster on his head over its surface, it's pretty incredible. The small group show in Lawndale's mezzanine gallery is filled with drawings created through actions that allow for little control of the finished product. The Art Guys, Michael Galbreth and Jack Massing, showcase their pyromaniac predilections. In one clip, they stick firecrackers and matches to paper and ignite them. In another, they create self-portraits from matches stuck into the wall and almost torch a Swedish gallery. Annette Lawrence presents her rubbings, made from a stack of every unsolicited piece of paper she received for a year. And John Adelman shows the result of his painstaking tracings of a pile of 13,944 nails, along with the 461 component parts of a typewriter. This work is probably the biggest disappointment — the traced objects work fine, but the mottled, painterly background Adelman uses is distracting. Through June 14. 4912 Main, 713-528-5858. — KK