In West Central gallery's snug front room Lennie Mace is able to address everyone collectively, fielding questions and using artwork on display to illustrate his answers. " Anyway," he adds, " I've also always used ballpoint pens just as often for what they were invented. In the same way as his Media Graffiti has become part of the whole, so will his dry pens. Mace makes it clear that these invisible ink works are not a permanent replacement to the kind of artwork which attracted fans in the first place. Call forensics.įor fans of Mace's colorful and fancifully composed figurative ballpoint artwork, all is not lost. Such heavy-handed texts, monetary iconography and creative smudging culminate in more extreme examples such as ¥€$ ( 2014, pictured), where the fingerprints, Mace explains, " say something about identity and privacy, getting ones' hands dirty or getting caught red-handed ". The strategically placed fingerprints act as quotation marks, highlighting the opening line " Don't tell anyone what…" and closing line " …i told you so" ( both pictured as details) at the top left and bottom right corners of the piece graphic bookends to the seemingly empty space in between which, depending on lighting and still only barely discernible even upon closer inspection, holds line after line of ' invisible' text pressed into the page. In Ghost Writer ( 2013), Mace overlays key segments of handwritten dry pen text with minimal dabs of color from red ballpoint ink applied directly by fingertips. Like Picasso going cubism, technical abilities and creative genius having long been established, Mace has earned his license to experiment. As a ballpoint elder, of sorts, Mace is one of the few who can take such sharp turns. Secrets tucked into the texts of some, and graphic imagery hidden in others, will at least keep people whispering. The completely ' blank' results are an acquired taste, and Mace admits this small exhibition acts as a test-run to see how much - or, how little - people can take before losing interest. By 2010 he was leaving out the ink more and more, '' Drawing board on my lap stack of thick paper glass of wine in one hand spent ballpoint in the other''.
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