A drawing that unfolds over time: Escaping the Eye exists both as an animation and as a fully unrolled image, revealing a process of transformation as it happens.
Starting from The Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan), the work understands the idea of the journey not as a religious narrative, but as an open artistic process. The animation was created as a continuous charcoal drawing on a paper scroll. At any given moment, only a fragment is visible; what came before disappears, and what follows remains unknown. The drawing evolves intuitively – line becomes form, form becomes transformation. The act of drawing thus becomes a journey in itself. The resulting network of paths, structures, and figures can be read as landscape, river, or organism. Meaning is not fixed, but emerges through the viewer’s perception.
In the installation, this process exists in two simultaneous forms: as an animated sequence in a video, and as the fully unrolled drawing, mounted on wooden rods at both ends, where the entire temporal progression remains visible at once.
At the beginning of the drawing, a large eye appears – unplanned and unintentional. From its centre, dashed lines emerge, extending in different directions. One of these continues upward and remains as a trace of a gaze that is no longer observing, but dissolves. “Escaping the Eye” describes this trajectory.
The work consists of two parts:
– Drawing, charcoal on paper, 50 × 117 cm (portrait format)
– Animation film, 1’30” in loop, silent
© Maria Korporal 2026
Exhibitions:
• July 26 – August 30, 2026: The Pilgrim’s Progress, Galerie am Klostersee, Lehniner Institut für Kunst und Kultur, Kloster Lehnin, Germany.
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