Etude pour Tiling at the Fourth

Name: Ragnar Digital, LLC
Price range: $

Jean-Pierre Hébert

1977

Plotter Drawing

21 x 21 cm

Description

Exposed to computers through his work at IBM and Hewlett-Packard, Jean-Pierre Hébert saw their potential as tools for creating art that humans could not make otherwise. He began to use software to generate instructions for the machines, using pen plotters to transform code into drawings. Étude pour Tiling at the Fourth is an early example of his digital drawings.

Hébert’s practice used algorithms to produce complex geometric drawings. This tiled composition of interlocking squares resembles a printed pattern, but it is in fact drawn with one uninterrupted line. Variations in line density create light and dark areas, giving the work a woven appearance.