There seems to still exist a certain hierarchy of medium in the public’s reception of works of art.

When masterpieces are popularly recalled, they are almost always paintings and often project a completeness that leaves the viewer too transfixed to realize its mechanics. Do we want a “behind-the-scenes tour” in our art or a vehicle that holds our suspension of disbelief for as long as we look at it? Do we demand a finished piece, complete in its illusionist autonomy? And further, what constitutes a finished piece?

These are all, of course, highly subjective questions whose normative answers have been wildly challenged by rise of the abstraction and post-abstraction of the last 100 years, but the persistence of realism and figuration demand an answer.

These questions are all at play in the work of John Lincoln, currently on view at the Pollock Gallery of Art. The exhibition, entitled “John Lincoln: The New York and Paris Drawings,” surveys his work from the last 20 years, specifically his drawings done at the Arts Students League in New York and the Academie de la Grand Chaumière in Paris. One cannot help but be accosted by the graphic palette that immediately greets one upon entering the gallery. Brown and black ink overpower and outline pencil and chalk. The mixture of mediums creates an overwhelming active composition and yet remains grounded on the flat plane of paper. There are no painterly encaustic layers or drips present, but the overall effect is surprisingly expressive and conveys the varying degrees of the artistic “mark.”

It is through the consistency of the subject in these drawings, done in different cities at different institutions, that we can begin to see that it is not just the medium that is important to Lincoln, but about point of view and the mechanics of drawing. Many of the drawings depict scenes of the public studio, whether of live models posing or even more self-reflexive artists drawing those models. The vantage point is widely varied, and Lincoln toys with the perspective to create oftentimes difficult pictorial space.

All of the untitled drawings illustrate figuration of some sort, yet this is not portraiture in the traditional sense. The figures are all anonymous and rarely are any of their gazes directed at the viewer; yet, in looking at a drawing of the back of someone’s head as they draw a figure in front of them, we are thus propelled into that space.

Furthering the exploration of the mechanics of drawing is precisely that space which Lincoln depicts. The space is exclusively institutional – space specifically designed and designated for the act of drawing (or, in broader terms, artistic production). His drawings portray the act of “drawing from the real,” and yet the depiction originates from an artificial and controlled “nature.”

There are no grand paintings in this exhibition, in scope or size, but do not be fooled into thinking that these are incomplete or unsuccessful works.

The variety of mediums itself suggests a thoughtfulness and deliberateness not readily found in a spontaneous or haphazard sketch.

“John Lincoln: The New York and Paris Drawings” is on view until Dec. 3.