[03] Art. Julie Mehretu.

City as a fluid and unstable organism. 


'Julie Mehretu's work is a hybrid art form that combines aspects of cartography, architectural drawing, urban planning, and abstract painting. The artist creates energetic compositions via a system of draw lines intersecting and superimposed over coloured planes, diagonals, parallelograms, archways, rendering of staircases, and dashes and circles that marked out unknown topographies. Mahretu's animated urbanscapes are reminiscent of Dutch architect Constant's drawings of Situationist cities, in which structures float above the landscape, leaving two spatial zones in which to conduct life. Mehretu similarly scrutinizes organizing models of urban planning, rejecting the notion that it is possible to impose a rigid structure on something as fluid and unstable as a city and its inhabitants. Understanding cities as more than just collections of buildings and people, she approaches them as psychogeographies that must allow for spontaneous activity and encounters outside the presumed patterns of movement and interaction'
Schwabsky, B., 2004. Vitamin P: New Perspectives in Painting. London, Phaidon Press Limited.

Julie Mehretu. Available at: <http://www.fotopedia.com/albums/oyBD73eDaNk/entries/_QZ2-xjlMTo> [Accessed on 25 Oct]

Bayreuth, Julie Mehretu, 2010. Available at: <http://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/julie-mehretu/#/images/1/> [Accessed on 25 Oct]