PULP: A Drawing Show | Smoke the Moon

smoke the moon is pleased to begin our 2026 program with PULP: a drawing show. PULP brings together a group of artists with developed and distinctive page-based practices: Heather Benjamin, Lulu Bonfils, Isabel Cavenecia, Simone Claudine, Joshua Drayzen, Terra Keck, Carla Lopez, Ellyx Martinez, Merrideth McDowell, Mike Nudelman, Anne Quiñones, Zac Scheinbaum, Casey Jex Smith, Johnathon Smith, Jed Webster Smith and Mickey Zacchilli. The work in this show encompasses the full range of mark-making approaches, though the artists are united by a lucid gaze. The title of this show references both a material inquiry and an aesthetic predilection. Pulp literature emerged at the turn of the 20th century: they were small, sensational books printed on wood-pulp paper with mass appeal. The artists brought together in this show demonstrate the infinite possibility of popular material. With backgrounds that span the worlds of tattooing, architecture, comics and fine art, each artist brings a unique vantage to their drawing practice. The page’s stylistic associations open the door for reinterpretation of drawing’s cultural location. Its point of access is simultaneously its point of departure. Sparse and dense, ebullient, raunchy, and mystic—each work in this show is surreal in its own language.There is a tactile splendor to drawing; a handful of everyday materials pushed to an ecstatic state. The core of the work is simple: the hand, the paper and the stylus. The work in PULP shares a material loyalty, the skin of the page mingling with ink, pencil, graphite and watercolor. This show exemplifies drawings’s moving target: formally, it has the capacity to serve as an act of documentation, preparation, and meditation. Drawing is the thing that we take with us: both ancient language and modern journal.