Figure Protocols 1998-2005

This series gathers nude studies as direct records of looking. The line seeks no polished contour; it registers weight, shift and tension, often in several overlapping attempts. In the openness of these traces, time itself stays legible — hesitation, correction, sudden clarity. The body serves as a measure of space and rhythm, with nothing added by way of narrative.

The series gathers fifty drawings in pencil on paper, 58 × 41 cm, made between 1998 and 2005. For seven years the work pursued a single question; it is the most extensive series in the entire body of work.

Pencil hides nothing. Every correction remains beside the line it corrects, every hesitation is recognisable as an interruption. The sheets therefore show not the result of looking but its course – hence the word protocol in the title.

The body here is not a motif but a measure. Proportion, weight and rotation can be tested against it because any deviation shows at once. What was worked out on the figure across those seven years returns in the later abstract works: there without the figure, but with the same attention to tension and balance.