Talk: The Paradoxes of Drawing with Brian Fay and Jan-Philipp Fruehsorge

On National Drawing Day 2024, Jan-Philipp Fruehsorge and Brian Fay discuss contemporary art practices and the innate paradoxes in drawing today: why is drawing described as something special and not at the same time? if drawing is a medium is there specific content? do we still see drawing as a verb or a noun?

This talk was kindly supported by the Goethe Institut Irland and was hosted as part of the annual celebration of National Drawing Day, an initiative of the National Gallery of Ireland.

Jan-Philipp Fruehsorge is a curator from Berlin. He opened Fruehsorge Contemporary Drawings in 2003, a gallery exclusively dedicated to the medium of drawing. This was followed by the establishment of the nonprofit platform The Drawing Hub, which, as a nomadic structure, conducts international projects to promote and research in drawing. As a recognised expert in the medium, Jan-Philipp has lectured and published extensively on the subject of drawing and contemporary art. As a curator, he has collaborated with museums and institutions in Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, China and Japan. Most recently he is curating a group show for the 2024 drawing biennale in Rimini with works from the FRAC Picardie in Amiens.

Brian Fay is an Irish artist living in Dublin, his practice is rooted in drawing and he uses the materiality of pre-existing artworks and objects to examine our own complex relationship to time. He currently holds a Three Year Membership Studio at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios. He recently completed a national touring survey show which opened in the Highlanes Gallery Drogheda then to Limerick City Gallery of Art and Uillinn West Cork Arts Centre, Cork, Ireland. In 2022, he undertook an artist residency at the Anni and Josef Albers Foundation, Connecticut, USA. He is a Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at Technological University Dublin and holds a practice led PhD from Northumbria University, England.