Using ink, conté or “anything black,” Ainhoa Menchaca creates drawings in which human bodies or faces seem to emerge almost spontaneously out of intricately arranged networks of lines. Those lines sometimes look like dripped paint, and at other times are arranged in tight bundles, but they always form a kind of web that seems to have a force and power of its own. In fact, the artist says the individual lines are not what form the figures in her compositions. “It’s not the line,” she says, “but the volume and the densities of the black which bring life to the human figures.” That sense of volume and composition is what lets her arrange those seemingly chaotic lines into recognizable patterns and figures.
In addition, Ainhoa’s ability to clearly communicate movement on two different planes is quite striking. Not only is there the motion of the energetically drawn lines themselves, but there is also the feeling that the figures created from those lines are in motion as well.