Schoolmates Slain, Najaf, Iraq 2007

"Concrete Drawing: Extending the Line"
California State University, Los Angeles
Fine Art Gallery
2009

I measure my drawings to create large scale collage installations from images found in magazines, newspapers and other media sources. For this exhibition, "Concrete Drawing: Extending the Line," I appropriated an image from the Los Angeles Timesm front page dating back January 2007.

I chose to draw this image, titled "Schoolmates Slain, Najaf, Iraq 2007" due to the horrifying event of youth being killed as the result of war. The image frames a single teenage girl running away with backpack in hand from the entrance of her school. As she runs out, on the steps of the entrance, blood and scattered school articles remain as the trace of where five teenage girls where killed and 21 injured from a mortar attack in Najaf, Iraq. My method of fragmenting and measuring allows me to describe and map out what I see when words are hard to describe these events.

The images I draw deal with war, religion, death, sexual desire, natural disasters, and or pop culture. I detail the image's lines with specific measurements (x inches) adding their corresponding degree angles (360 degrees - Y degrees = Z degrees) to create the many geometric shapes that make the whole.

The physical presence of the drawing creates an elaborate monochromatic collage, a wall relief, covering a wall or wrapping itself around the gallery's interior architecture. The image is scaled up from its printed size or as I call it, source image measurement, S.I.M., (i.e., 1/8 inch = 2 inch) into life size or converted scale measurement, C.S. M., creating a measured pixilation of the image. Made from various ripped pieces of wide ruled collage white paper, adhesive tape, pencil, glue, and map pins, the drawing appears to be on ther verge of falling apart mostly reiterating the choatic scene of the image. This repetitive and meditative process of drawing engages me to investigate the meaning of the image through measurements as a stand-in for language and offering an alternative description - one that points to and re-enforces the occurance of this horrific event by objective means.

Enrique Castrejon