Tony Lewis: Plunder

Chicago-based artist Tony Lewis (b. 1986) has created a new, site-specific drawing for the outward-facing wall of the Rose Art Museum's Lois Foster Wing, extending his ongoing investigations of the relationships between drawing, abstraction, and language. As the museum's 2017-2018 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist-in-Residence, Lewis made this mural—the artist’s first solo museum presentation in the Northeast—with the help of Brandeis University students. Using screws and graphite-dipped rubber bands, Lewis and his collaborators generated a large line drawing in the form of a Gregg shorthand notation, the stenographic script similar to abbreviated cursive. Rising in loose arcs across the expanse of the Foster wall, the drawing is an abstracted symbol of the word "plunder," from which the work takes its name. Lewis's Plunder will remain on view through December 2018.  

Right: Tony Lewis. Courtesy of Massimo de Carlo, Milan/London/Hong Kong.