Karl Haendel’s figures bend their arms and legs, curl and uncurl their backs, tense muscles and stretch resistance bands, sitting, lying down or standing. His new life-size graphite drawings show young people in training outfits, midriffs often exposed, and, apropos the medium, in black and white. Haendel’s drawing is meticulous and rigorously detailed, yet his photorealistic rendering of the protagonists is situated against colorful backgrounds of enamel paint. In Brahmos (2014) for instance, a young woman assumes a yoga pose, composing herself into a position resembling a triangle. She’s looking at a gray ground; behind her, black and green fields open out as an abstract window.
