A couple of days ago I was having a cup of coffee with my friend, meeting after a long break and talking, among other things, about automatism and automatic drawing in particular. The story goes — she complained about being so taken over by the whirl of the job that she abandoned pretty much every creative outlet she had after she started to work for that company. And now, as she quit that frustrating and draining company and had some rest, she’s still so exhausted that even after a while she struggles to get into that particular mood and create anything.

This is a common problem — creative practice requires consistency and in order to keep it that way — you need some sort of conditioning. Just like doing sports — you need to keep yourself in shape — otherwise your so-called “creative muscles” get atrophied and you need to start all over again from the ground up.

So naturally the conversation took a turn into “why don’t you just freestyle and see what happens?” direction with a reference to the surrealist technique of automatic drawing.

I always viewed automatic drawing a shorcut to jumpstarting the creative flow. You just need to that and that is the only real rule. No overthinking, no attachment, no engagement, just a burst of action.

As one of the examples of this approach i’ve mentioned Paul Paun and his series of Infra Black Drawings.

First, lets explain the man behind the work. Paul Paun is the lesser known part of the Romanian Surrealist Holy Trinity that also includes Gherasim Luca and Dolfi Trost. Just like his cohorts he found inspiration in the dynamic intensity of Futurism and inherent nihilism of Dada. Because of that his brand of surrealism was significantly less wishy-washy and much grittier than the mainstream representation of the movement. His works are warped, mutilated, contorted hanging twisted. The way he constructs imagery is very physical and blunt. Think of The Thing from The Thing.

Paul Paun made Infra-black drawings specifically for the exhibition called “Infra-Black” that opened in 1946. It was a sort of a throwback affair organized by the old pals to remind everything what the real surrealism is all about after the reek and rumble of WW2 was finally over.

It is a fascinating example of an automatic drawing that goes beyond into the unknown.

The series presents a sequences of abstract formless shapes in the state of the flux. This kind of texture was achieved by drawing with wide charcoal — there no clear lines — these are swathes of blackness on the white background pulling in every imaginable direction by strokes short and long, hard and soft. It is disjointed and yet it gells together.

The pieces weren’t even drawn traditionally, more like stumbled into the way they are by rolling and tumbling the piece of charcoal on the paper. In a way, the drawings are more thrown together than drawn.

Infra-black drawing are a kind of micro-abysses designed to be looked at. It is very nihilist stuff in a straightforward way. The whole “infra” thing is all about avoiding the obvious, staying elusive, slightly beyind the grasp of cognition but still capable of rumbling the impression. These pieces are not designed to evoke images and don’t really point out at anything, but the opposite notion persists. Kinda like Rorschach’s ink blots but even more asbtract. There is no real definition behind the drawings — they are what they are.

The drawings are intentionally cut from the casual comprehension and left for either blank staring or blatant indulgence to the apophenic pareidolia. Infra-black drawings seemingly taunt the viewer to think about it by the virtue of being nondescript enough to cause that kind of reaction. It is a cognitive loop, a trap of habit that needs to be broken in order to go beyond.

On one hand, it all seems like a cloud-like formations of steam or smoke with various density and content. One might think what could have caused this kind of formation ( my take is that these are flashforward Court Room drawings of the crime scene recreation of the smoke that came from John Baldessari burning his early body work). On the other hand, the smooth nondescript abstractness reminds of the Northern Lights sky phenomenon filtered into a hard black and white. It can go either way, but there is a much more to it if you don’t try to comprehend it.

The trick is to resist the temptation to insert your interpretation of the image and treat the drawing as it is, as it was made — a charcoal drawing on a piece of paper. This might be too underwhelming and unsatisfactory — but that’s the way it is.

You know the drill — you stare at the abyss long enough and the abyss stares back at you. This occurrence incites that nonplus semblance of a feeling that lurks deep inside and rustles quite a bit before vanishing and leaving a void of known unknown. That’s what the great automatic drawing are able to do better than any other form of artistic expression.