John Hurrell – 11 January, 2026

A large set of framed Giacometti lithographs based on drawings of figures, heads, and Parisian city scenes (wide-ranging sites such as skeleton & natural history museums, parks, late night bars, pool halls, printers, cafes and streets), are here presented on the two opposing walls of a long gallery corridor. In 1961 they were published as a book. To see them on display in Auckland in 2026 is a real treat.

These printed drawings utilize a system of clustered nervous lines to tentatively indicate figures and objects in space. They thus convey a sense of calculated instability. Despite such hovering transient forms, the resulting linked-up traces are generated by real things that don’t flee after you briefly look away in ‘real time’ within ‘real space’. Their absent (yet insistent) presence underpins the ‘architecture’ of the carefully positioned, ultimately stable, volume-describing marks.

As well as commenting on the vagaries of sight they ruminate on the act of looking (its mechanics), by attempting precise spatial analysis using cumulative mark application and overlapping. Perhaps more importantly, their bodily image (the ‘thinness’ that diminishes the corporeal to create a sense of emaciation or decay) has existential significance, a sense of chronological vulnerability, consciousness of the impact of time, and pervading loneliness.

Besides suggesting dissolving solidity and reversal of growth, Giacometti’s wonderful drawn shimmering linear clusters also suggest fleeting movement even when the figure is ostensibly stationary. The tremulous applied ‘mark’ here is a fundamental unit, whether solo or collective. It is a kind of stammering. Spontaneous or predetermined. Corporeal or ethereal.

John Hurrell

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