Canada 

Drawn Through Black removes the idea of drawing-relief-sculpture from the wall and down, across the floor, over a chair and onto a pool on the floor. There is no pattern or even colour here, so that instead of a vibrating shallow object, the work functions as a kind of void that punches a hole into space. Like a large inkblot, the work spreads and contracts into the white space of the gallery, simultaneously producing form and its own shadow. It becomes both portal and abyss that invites engagement while blocking our ability to see into the suggested space. Grosz has written that  ”sensation is what art forms from chaos through the extraction of qualities” (Grosz 2008: 8). If we consider black holes as elements of a vast universe around which matter is continually evolving, Carter’s Drawn Through Black can be understood as both defining that material and gesturing towards the infinite chaos that lies within and around it. Seigworth and Gregg have written that affect theory is a matter of affectual composition, where ‘composition’ is understood as an ontology always coming to formation, as a creative/ writerly task (Seigworth and Gregg 2010: 11). Hence Drawn Through Black demonstrates this continual formation of matter from chaos, a composition presenting itself as an evolving creative task and investigation. 

Excerpt from Material Becomings in the Work of Lyn Carter, 2011

By Corinna Ghaznavi

Grosz, Elizabeth. Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the framing of the Earth. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008.

Seigworth, Gregory J. and Melissa Gregg. “An Inventory of Shimmers.” in Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth, ed. The Affect Theory Reader. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010. 1-25.