"12 Hours" Heartbeat Drawing

“It all starts with the heartbeat. The first sign of our existence is the beating of our own heart.” (Makoto Sasaki)

In 1995, Sasaki travelled to Shanghai, China, while he was in the streets, amongst thousands of people, through their presence he felt their heartbeats, an energy that he wanted to replicate. This was the beginning of a series called Heartbeat Drawings where he listened to his heartbeat and drew a sharp red ink mark on canvas or paper to coincide with the blood’s pulse. A process that uses intense concentration and discipline, he produces repetitive marks that also resembled textile when viewed from distance. Sasaki also presents performative works involving the participation of over 2,000 people whose heartbeats are measured, such as at the Venice Biennale in 2011.

This print is part of the ‘30 x 30cm Project’ series initiated by Robert Arber in 2003 as a collaboration between Arber & Son Editions and visiting artists-in-residence at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, US. The name of the project reflects the physical dimensions of the pages upon which the artists’ work. The techniques employed for each edition vary from lithography as is the case for Sasaki, and relief printing to digital prints.

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