Obsession: Lighter

A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes
Obsession: Lighter, 2014 — pen on paper. Courtesy of the artist
Year
2014
Medium
PIGMA Sakura on paper
Stroke
One, continuous — the pen never leaves the paper
Halting
The drawing ends when the pen lifts
Sheets
Ten

The pen is a PIGMA Sakura and it does not leave the paper. One stroke begins somewhere on the sheet and everything that follows is that same unbroken line — the roaming, the lighters, the roaming again — until the moment the pen lifts, which is also the moment the drawing is over.

What happens in between is not composition. The line wanders with no object in view, taking the sheet at whatever pace it takes it, and then at some point the energy bundles: the wandering tightens, closes on itself, and a lighter is drawn. When it is finished the roaming resumes, loosens back out across the paper, until it gathers again somewhere else and another lighter comes. Two on one sheet, a dozen on the next. Nothing decides how many. The count is simply how many times the line condensed before the hand let go.

A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes
Courtesy of the artist
A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes

So the lighter is not the subject of the drawing but the place where the drawing thickens — the only figure this line is willing to make, and an attractor in a walk that has no destination. The sheet ends on a halting condition rather than a judgement: not when the image is complete, but when the pen leaves the paper. Three years later the same structure would be given to an algorithm set walking a screen until it touched the edge of the frame buffer; here it is still a hand, and what halts it is not a boundary but the end of the obsession.

A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes
A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes
A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes
A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes
A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes
A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes
A sheet covered edge to edge in a dense tangle of looping pen line, out of which several upright lighters are drawn in darker, heavier strokes
Dario Srbic_

© Dario Srbić, Berlin 2026