Floating Window 6, gel pen and graphite on black paper, 2023, 11” x 17”

I use the window motif in this series of gel pen drawings on black paper to frame uncanny, urban spaces. The images are sourced from my archive of iPhone snapshots from Brooklyn to Tokyo. Forms are often backlit and obscured by interior or exterior lighting. The graphite grid in my drawings functions as an interruption of pictorial space and a gesture to what lies beyond the frame, undefined. I am interested in capturing peripheral experience, longing, and the vastness of unnarrated space. The window is a formal element in many art historical movements including the Renaissance, Symbolism, and Minimalism. It is an architectural grid that can be transparent or opaque – admitting and reflecting light. It is both a portal and a moment in time. By decentering the gel pen drawing, I highlight its tenuous role, simultaneously shifting the hierarchical importance of the viewer. The stippling technique alludes to matter forming and dispersing or vibrating in place. I aim to transform concrete, mundane experience into something ineffable and just out of reach.

Shanti Grumbine is a New York-based multimedia artist. She has been an artist in residence at the Millay Colony, Ucross, Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, Saltonstall Foundation, Wave Hill Winter Workspace Residency, Lower East Side Printshop Keyholder Residency, Artist in the Marketplace (AIM), Women’s Studio Workshop, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, BRIC Workspace, Interlude, and the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program. Fellowships and grants include the NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Printmaking/Drawing/Book Arts, the Santo Foundation Individual Artist Grant, RVAC Money and Materials Grant, Arts Mid-Hudson Individual Artist Grant, Taking Care Fund, A.I.R Gallery Fellowship and the LABA Fellowship at the 14th Street Y. Select exhibition venues include The Bronx Museum, Dorsky Gallery, Dorsky Museum, CCA Sante Fe, Love Apple Art Space, Magnan-Metz Gallery, Fridman Gallery, Planthouse Gallery, PS 122, Smack Mellon, Woodstock Artist Association and Museum, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey and IPCNY. Shanti received an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

www.shantigrumbine.com

@shantigrumbine