Andres Gurwicz
artist

The encounter with Andres Gurwicz’s marker-pen drawings reveals a collection of desert landscapes, simultaneously familiar and alien. Arid expanses, friable earth in shades of brown and red, and pinkish-purple skies stretch to the edges of the paper. Within them appear signs of human presence: a Ferris wheel ride, sound amplification systems, an abandoned tire hanging from the branches of a solitary tree. These sometimes appear as if left behind, and at other times as though they have just arrived, uprooted from their familiar context and waiting for something to happen.

 

Gurwicz started the Residence on Mars series during 2020, after an artist residency program in which he was scheduled to participate was canceled. As an alternative, Gurwicz created a private residency program for himself in his studio: that summer, he sat in the studio watching images documenting the planet Mars. During 2020-2021, several rovers were sent to the planet (by the US, China, and the UAE), and the photographs transmitted from them were available online and even on dedicated Instagram accounts. Observing the distant planet through "up-close" photographs, during a period in which the mere possibility of free movement or travelling across the world was severely restricted, aroused in Gurwicz questions regarding the connection between the thought of virtual human "residence" (via rovers and robots on the planet's soil) and the characteristics of an "artist residency": What does the concept of "residence" in a place actually mean? Must a person be physically present to feel part of a place? What happens to our consciousness when every other place - and even our immediate living environment - remains outside the range of options?

 

Over the years, Gurwicz built up an image archive of the planet, which also included photographs from previous rovers sent before 2020, joined by photographs of craters from around the world and local desert images Gurwicz took himself. This image bank served as the foundation for the works in the exhibition, where the connection between places blurs the distinction between them, creating a space that belongs neither entirely here nor there: Mars does not appear in the works as a futuristic destination or a promise of life elsewhere, but rather as a point of view: a distance, half-imagined, half-real, from which one can re-examine the human world, its habits, and the imagery it generates.

 

Gurwicz projected the various landscapes onto paper in a wide range of sizes. Using Chinese ink markers, he created thousands of short, dense lines following the contours of the terrain, twisting, piling up, and wearing down side by side. These multiple lines produce surfaces reminiscent of topographic maps, yet also resemble corporal tissues of skin, muscle, and flesh. Gurwicz likens the physical, laborious act of marker drawing to the robotic arm movement of a space rover roaming Martian soil: the repetitive, Sisyfean action turns Gurwicz’s body into a kind of "printer" generating the image using markers as ink. As with a printer, markers also have an end point: the ink runs out, the color fades, and eventually expires. Thus, inscribed within the drawing is not only the depicted landscape, but also the time and movement invested in its creation, which ultimately lead to the "death of the marker."

 

Within these spaces almost devoid of human beings, the various objects assume a thought-provoking presence. They testify to play, recreation, music, and movement, yet the actions themselves do not take place. The Ferris wheel stands without an audience; the sound systems appear in drawings that cannot produce sound. The tension between the potential for action and the silence of the image accompanies the entire series. The connection of the works to the worlds of sound and music stems from the imagery itself (a radio receiver, a speaker system, a DJ booth), as well as from the cultural association between open landscapes and the world of raves and outdoor parties. Sonic references are also embedded within the work process itself: the friction of the markers on paper produces a consistent, rhythmic sound, but the melody created during the act leaves only a visual mark on the page.

 

In the current exhibition, for the first time in Gurwicz’s work, the drawing also leaves the wall and enters real space. A large-scale work unfolds across the gallery floor; parts of it are raised and pulled upward, like a layer peeling off the surface. The landscape, hitherto constructed through lines as an illusion of depth and topography, acquires a body. The paper folds, rises, and takes up volume, and the drawing becomes a spatial environment one can move around. The transition from wall to floor also challenges the point of view: one can no longer stand in front of the landscape and view it from a distance; it exists within the same space as the body. The peeling action exposes the other side of the drawing and what was hidden beneath the surface, returning to the work the corporeal image present in it from the outset: the earth's surface as skin, the line as an incision, and the top layer almost as tissue that can be lifted and revealed.

 

The distance offered by Residence on Mars is, in the end, imagined: the further the gaze retreats from Planet Earth, the more Gurwicz’s landscapes bring us back to the body, to matter, and to the most familiar human actions. This distance intrigues Gurwicz - as someone who himself immigrated from one country to another - regarding the human species' capacity to observe itself and decipher its cultural patterns. Perhaps for this reason, even in pictorial spaces seemingly empty of human existence, we feel as though something has already occurred - or that something is about to begin.

 

Hagar Raban, July 2026