Deciphering the “Gibberish Drawings” of Ori Toor
When Ori Toor sits down to craft a drawing in his Gibberish series, he typically has in his mind just one image or stray narrative to begin the work. The Tel Aviv-based illustrator, fine artist, and animator says he’s always surprised at what happens next, and it “never turns out like anything I imagine.”
“I’m not even sure I have an imagination anymore,” Toor says. “Or maybe my process of imagining became fully visual: I need to draw and see things in order to imagine new things. Things happen on the canvas and not in my head so much. It’s really important for me to stay surprised. I don’t see much point in making anything that I can predict. If I feel like that’s happening: I will immediately cause a happy accident, like erasing something important or adding a random element that ‘ruins’ the work, and see what happens next.”
Toor’s freelance work carries notes of that penchant toward improvisation, whether it’s a stirring, multi-component advertisement for Nike, a Wired magazine illustration, or one of his animation projects. All of it shows an artist reining in—and thriving in—chaos. But the Gibberish series is the most vivid realization of his talents in creating dynamic stories that traverse across the page and offer multiple points of entry and interpretations. Mysterious machines line landscapes, packed with familiar forms and abstractions, as miniature and towering characters emerge nearby. Toor is somehow able to create a sense of cohesion, if not through palettes or intersecting lines, through an assumption from the viewer that all of it is part of a single puzzle—even if it isn’t. The running selection of works was given the formal name of Gibberish in recent years, but he says it’s a “refinement of what I’ve been doing for many years: basically doodling mindlessly.”
my process of imagining became fully visual: I need to draw and see things in order to imagine new things. Things happen on the canvas and not in my head so much.”
The first piece in the series was crafted in a time of frustration for the artist, who during a stretch a few years back, had begun to look for a day job before “things started to pick up, so thankfully I was able to keep being a freelancer.” The early and avid lover of animation has occasionally found commissions intersecting with longtime influences, as in his work for Cartoon Network. His ongoing animated GIFs series, Loopisms, carry his distinctly bold and “wobbly forms,” sharing DNA with his Gibberish drawings in form and subverting expectations. The latter drawings also benefit from Toor’s experience right after his time studying illustration at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design is Israel, when he worked in layouts and graphics in newspapers.
Today, above all else, his body of work shares a consistent attitude. “I always want to feel like I’m just playing
around in my sketchbook,” Toor says. “So even if it’s a big commercial illustration, I need to feel like I’m fucking around with art. If I take a project too seriously, it just ruins it. I started the Gibberish series in a time when I was increasingly frustrated and hopeless about making money doing what I love. I had all these unwanted obsessive thoughts about what can I do to make it or what will people actually like. These are legitimate thoughts but they were hurting me and really taking the joy—and originality—out of the work.”
I get so into the flow of things that if I come back after months to look at it, I’ll see things I don’t remember ever drawing.”
The artist hops between analogue drawing and using digital tools to create his pieces.
“I like working digitally because I enjoy the unlimited materials and colors,” he says, on the benefits of using the flagship Adobe program in his Gibberish series. “I could be working with other software, but Photoshop is super intuitive for me after so many years of use. It’s so intuitive in fact that it feels as natural as drawing in a sketchbook. I need to feel comfortable in order to improvise and at the same time make something that looks nice and finished. Objectively, Adobe Illustrator, which I love, is much better-suited to what I do and there are huge advantages to working with vectors. But in Photoshop I do tiny little pixel level adjustments that makes everything feel more warm and fluid.”
Those tidbits offer some insight into why the work appears and feels the way it does. But if the origins of the Gibberish narratives are so organic, how one is supposed to interpret them become just as loose. When asked if he enjoys all the ways in which people decipher his Gibberish, he offers an enthusiastic response. “I don’t get to do that enough, but it’s much more interesting than my own interpretations,” Toor says. “People sometimes see things I totally miss. When I work on a piece, I get so into the flow of things that if I come back after months to look at it, I’ll see things I don’t remember ever drawing. It’ll be amazing to know what people think is happening in my life according to the imagery.”*
This article originally appeared in Hi-Fructose Issue 49, which is sold out. Like what we do? Get our latest print issue as part of a new subscription to Hi-Fructose here.
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