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Louise Despont According to the Universe

November 13, 2015

What is the source of inspiration? Filmed in her Tribeca studio, Louise Despont peruses a vast reference library of images she began collecting in high school and maintains to this day. Drawn to geometry, energy waves, and universal symbols, Despont’s interests reveal a fascination with underlying patterns and cosmological draughtsmen: Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung, Agnes Martin, Charles Burchfield, Martin Ramirez, Achilles G. Rizzoli, Adolf Wölfli, Hilma af Klint, Theosophy, Buddhist medical charts, Shaker gift drawings, seismographs, echolocation, mandalas, yantras, Tantric drawings, maps, gardens, fasciation in plants, beehives, kilim, ikat, Jantar Mantar, and masks.

“What’s so interesting about the creative act is that you can access something completely outside yourself,” says Despont, who makes a distinction between consciously referencing subject matter in her artwork versus communing with a sense of unconscious awareness. “If you offer yourself up as the hands to make the work the relationship you form with what you communicate with has its own voice.”

More information and credits

Featuring Despont’s drawings included in the exhibitions Harmonic Tremor (2015) at Nicelle Beauchene and The Six-Sided Force (2014) at Pioneer Works, as well as scenes from her stop-motion animation Experiments in Moving Drawings, Parts I & II (2007).

Credits

Art21 New York Close Up Created & Produced by: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Director: Wesley Miller. Editor: Brad Kimbrough. Cinematography: John Marton, Wesley Miller & Andrew Whitlatch. Sound: Wesley Miller. Design & Graphics: Open. Music: Jared C. Balogh. Thanks: Nicelle Beauchene, Catherine Despont, Thierry Despont, Gabriel Florenz, Pioneer Works, Inae Rurup & Dustin Yellen. An Art21 Workshop Production. © Art21, Inc. 2015. All rights reserved.

Art21 New York Close Up is supported, in part, by The Lambent Foundation; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and by individual contributors.

Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian

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Licensing

Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.

Louise Despont

Louise Despont was born in 1983 in New York; she lives and works in New York and in Bali, Indonesia. Since discovering the potential of working with pencil and architectural stencils on paper, Despont has adopted an intuitive process in which she allows her drawings to develop as she creates them, resulting in an almost devotional object comprised of dense colors and shapes. Having collected images for many years, Despont complements her broad visual references with her interest in energy and spirituality.

“What’s so interesting about the creative act is that you can access something completely outside yourself…”

Louise Despont