Mischievous Lines

“It looks like it should be a cake!” remarked Thomas de Monchaux of the intricate model, sitting squarely in the middle of a wine and water laden table double parked on the street outside the basement architecture gallery citygroup at 104b Forsyth, for the opening of Linee Occulte: Drawing Architecture, by Daisy Ames of Studio Ames. Yes, dear reader, you heard it right—a table! A model! Wine!

While distancing was observed and admittance to the space itself was limited to scheduled entries of four at a time, this was an in-person event, the first citygroup has held since last year, and Ames celebrated by creating an illusion for our eyes. Using the tricks of perspective, Ames dissolved the walls of the narrow gallery to take on the appearance of a much larger space, as though citygroup had knocked down its walls to eat up its subterranean neighbors. Invited exhibitors (Lindsay Harkema, Melissa Shin, Stephanie Lin, Lindsey Wikstrom, Kevin Hirth, Mersiha Veledar, Iman Fayyad & Alfie Koetter) made drawings that either jumped back into thorny realities, such as the carbon extraction involved in an 8 story building (Wikstrom) or breast feeding while on zoom (Harkema), or jumped even deeper into perspectival geometry wormholes (Fayyad & Koetter). In her own drawing—“Mischievous Lines”—Ames made an overlay focusing on a single block in Bed Stuy, including elements ranging from the buildings to air quality, tax incentives, gentrification and air pollution. As the tool of drawing uniquely allows, the piece combines and renders legible both the concrete and the abstract.