About the work

The drawing is based on the “acorn style” coat-hooks typically found in American classrooms. I made a series of enlarged marble and brass coat-hooks and then began animating them through drawings such as this one, as well as 3D versions with many of them becoming flaccid and losing their function.

The drawing uses a very specific technique from the Indian miniature tradition, using single-hair-tipped brushes and natural pigments applied in a pointillist technique on antique paper. Like much of my work it is rendered in Jaipur where I maintain a studio, working with Riyaz Uddin and a number of other highly trained miniaturist painters.

Date and country of birth

1967, GB

About the artist

Born 1967 London, Alexander Gorlizki lives and works in Brooklyn. Graduated from BA Bristol Polytechnic (1992), and MFA Slade School London (1994).

Gorlizki's works are held in public and private collections including the Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; Denver Art Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts; and The Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 

Selected solo exhibitions include Otherworldly Interiors, Gallery Ark, Vadodara (2020); Your Eyes So Beautiful, Like Washing Machines (But Not As Big), Kentler Gallery, New York (2019); Together, Forever, For Now, Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco (2018); Pink City Studio, Beyond Malabar Gallery, Kochi (2017); Subtle Bodies, Saucy Lines, Galerie Kudlek, Cologne (2016); Variable Dimensions, The Crow Collection, Dallas (2015-16); We Are One, Galerie Eric Mouchet, Paris (2014); What Gives?, Baldwin Gallery, Aspen (2014); For Immediate Release, Van Doren Waxter, New York (2013); Pre-existing Conditions, John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco (2010); and The First Time I Heard You Blink, Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York (2010). Selected group exhibitions include Travelling Narratives, 079 Gallery, Ahmedabad (2021); The Size of Thoughts, White Conduit Projects, London (2019); Living a Dream: Alexander Gorlizki, Magic Markings, Gugging Artists, Galerie Gugging, Vienna (2018); Luminously Between Eternities: The Contemporary Miniature as Evolution, Gallery Ark, Vadodara (2018); And per se and XXIV/XXV, Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh (2018); and Re Present: Photography from South Asia, Kamloops Art Gallery, British Columbia (2018).