Grad student stretches into drawing performance

Posted Fri, 10/10/2008 - 8:15am by Matt Itelson

Michael Namkung makes his art with his back against the wall. The M.F.A. candidate invites the public to watch him conduct kinesthetic drawing experiments that employ the physicality his body as a medium. His next wall-sit performance takes place at 12:30 p.m. Oct. 16 at the old racquetball courts on campus.

Namkung bases his drawing process on both a vocabulary of athletic movement and the frameworks of sports training regimens. "My work aims to disturb lines that are habitually drawn, and encourages us to question the stability of the demarcations that we draw around ourselves," he said. "To this end, I explore embodied experiences that aim to provoke questions and open spaces. In order to enter an embodied state, I subject myself to conditions of physical duress."

Photo: courtesy of Michael Namkung