Karolful Karolful

Figure Drawing

exploring themes of human body and expression

Personally, my drawings are a study of how the human body in motion can create emotionally charged imagery. I am interested in poses that alike figurative sculptures, are evocative of psychological disposition.  A shape and pose of human body can convey a whole array of experiences. In order to investigate that I have collaborated with many contemporary dancers, who are experts in this field. This concluded in a series of artworks and exhibitions in the years 2012–2015.

Technique
Dig­i­tal and Tra­di­tion­al Pen­cil Drawing 
Dates
2013–2015
Subject
fig­ure draw­ing, por­trait, real­is­tic depiction 

Exploring Dance in Illustration

Fol­low­ing up from the theme of my Master’s Theme, my fas­ci­na­tion with dance orig­i­nates from my inter­est in the human body as an art form and I am espe­cial­ly intrigued in its behav­iour whilst in motion. With move­ment comes the con­cept of the ‘fugi­tive’  and sub­se­quent­ly an artis­tic need to devel­op a way to cap­ture this, or at least an impres­sion of the feel­ing it evokes and con­veys. Dance, like music, is a fleet­ing form of art unless record­ed. I find my chal­lenge is to immor­talise its essence with­in a new medi­um. In this way, through a more per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tion, I can enable one to con­tem­plate sin­gu­lar frames that usu­al­ly gets lost in the flux of dance. Dance as a sub­ject is par­tic­u­lar­ly appeal­ing to me because its per­for­mance gen­er­ates the utmost uplift­ing expe­ri­ence, not only for the dancer but also for the one who observes them danc­ing. Fur­ther­more, as a metaphor it rep­re­sents the strug­gle to con­quer the lim­i­ta­tions of one’s body, striv­ing to devel­op full con­trol over it. Often a body of a dancer is akin to that of an ath­lete; owing to the fact that dance requires enor­mous dis­ci­pline, train­ing, strength and moti­va­tion. Once rig­or­ous­ly mas­tered, their bod­ies allow the dancers to express them­selves in the most unique and unin­hib­it­ed forms.

I’ve col­lab­o­rat­ed with indi­vid­ual dancers, groups, stu­dents work­ing along­side them in a dance stu­dio tak­ing snaps of their per­for­mance to lat­er on analyse and use pho­tographs are ref­er­ence material.

Selection of Exhibitions

2014–2015 

After the suc­cess of MA show in Shang­hai (click here to read more) my last main exhi­bi­tion took place in Sep­tem­ber 2014 and was called “Pandora’s Box”. This was host­ed and com­mis­sioned by Union 105 | East Street Arts. I’ve con­tin­ued to devel­op a new tech­nique of join­ing dig­i­tal lin­ear out­line with tra­di­tion­al pen­cil draw­ing which result­ed in mixed media draw­ings. Inspired by two Greek mytho­log­i­cal motifs ; ‘Pandora’s Box’ and ‘The Fates’, this exhi­bi­tion expand­ed on a dance instal­la­tion per­for­mance by the North­ern School of Con­tem­po­rary Dance and a col­lab­o­ra­tion with a video artist Bless­ing Oye­ban­ji. It encour­ages one to reflect on human nature and its influ­ence on people’s lives.

Lat­er on that year, I was invit­ed to join Turn­Around Dance The­atre in their res­i­den­cy at York­shire Dance. They were devel­op­ing a new piece called “Mir­rored Minds”, in which they explored how we use mir­ror neu­rons to learn, recog­nise and empathise with one anoth­er. In response, in Jan­u­ary 2015, I pro­duced a series of 4 draw­ings that were exhib­it­ed in The Dukes gallery in Lan­cast­er. These were 30cm by 40cm mixed media pieces that com­bined dig­i­tal lin­ear out­line with tra­di­tion­al pen­cil drawing.

In 2015, I cre­at­ed last large draw­ing inspired by con­tem­po­rary dance. That year I was invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in a series of three pop-up exhi­bi­tions in Man­ches­ter, each on one of the Fri­days the 13ths in 2015. These exhi­bi­tions were inspired by the notions of luck, chance, fate and coin­ci­dence. I took an oppor­tu­ni­ty to draw fur­ther inspi­ra­tion from Greek Mythol­o­gy to explore the motif of Rota For­tu­nae (Wheel of For­tune). It is a con­cept rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the capri­cious nature of fate and luck and of how with­in our per­son­al nar­ra­tives we habit­u­al­ly rep­re­sent time as a cycle between pros­per­i­ty and dis­as­ter. For the pur­pose of this exhi­bi­tion I intro­duced a new tech­nique which blends a graphite mono­type with tra­di­tion­al pen­cil draw­ing. These draw­ings have been pro­duced in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the dancers Louis Lever and Joe Thomas.

2013 — previous years

Pre­vi­ous­ly, In 2013 my art­work was short­list­ed for the New Lights exhi­bi­tion, a bi-annu­al com­pe­ti­tion show­cas­ing the best young con­tem­po­rary artists in the north of Eng­land. And in Sep­tem­ber the New Lights exhi­bi­tion had its pri­vate open­ing at the Mer­cer Gallery in Har­ro­gate. At this event my illus­tra­tions were award­ed the TIG Prize (The Inter Group) for most out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al work. The Exhi­bi­tion then moved on to The Bis­cuit Fac­to­ry gallery in New­cas­tle for the dura­tion of Jan­u­ary 2014.

In 2013, I was invit­ed to col­lab­o­rate with an Inclu­sive Youth Dance Com­pa­ny called Me2 on a project lat­er enti­tled “Ped­al Pow­er” which was a part of series cel­e­brat­ing art and cycling in Leeds.  The project involved doc­u­ment­ing work­shops run by Jan­ice Kei­th with Me2, which set out to invent cre­ative dance work around the theme of cycling. This con­clud­ed in a series of dig­i­tal illus­tra­tions por­tray­ing the young dancers involved. These were com­piled and pub­lished in an A5 booklet.

Ear­li­er on I con­tin­ued to work with Joanne Pir­rie and Crys­tal Zill­wood pro­duc­ing pen­cil draw­ings devel­op­ing my craft.