Drawing facing calligraphy: surface, subject and Su Shi

ABSTRACT This article explores how the search for an attribution of meaning to the marks on a surface promotes the irruption of language in drawing, and its consequent stiffening. In contrast to western culture, Chinese calligraphy, to which the trace of drawing belongs, unfolds the rhythm contained in its characters and removes the mere search for meaning from the relationship with writing and, in turn, with drawing. The poetry, paintings and calligraphy of Su Shi, master of the Sung dynasty, are presented in dialogue with the contemporary graphic work of Rebeca Font, in order to detach drawing from its ‘skin’. In this way, drawing unfolds in an unthinkable space, alluding to Foucault, and reveals an implicit multiplicity, which contains in itself the human being, and which in constant movement manifests its need of being in heterotopia.