British artist Ewan Gibbs makes painstaking drawings in pencil or ink, composed of thousands of single marks, either circles or lines, one per square of the graph paper support. For his series From the Empire State Building, the artist visited the Empire State Building’s observation deck to photograph surrounding buildings that then were used as source material in the studio. The resulting drawings are built square-by-square with the artist’s focus on one small section at a time, rather than on the image as a whole. With each drawing sharing the same title, Gibbs hopes to erase a narrative and focus on how we perceive the image instead. While the meticulous nature of Gibb’s work draws us in, each subject is recognized more distinctly when observed from a distance.

The iconic Flatiron Building near Madison Square, a triangular steel-framed skyscraper, was the tallest structure north of the financial district when it was completed in 1902. Because of its unusual shape, it immediately attracted the attention of artists and photographers such as Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz, not surprising that Gibbs selected the landmark as well.