Through drawing, painting, sculptural installation, sound, and writing, Marisa Mandler explores the human desire for control, capturing moments of imbalance, imperfection, and tension. For her action drawings, titled “Level Drawings”, Mandler made extensive marks with a level held close to her body, continuing until she tired physically of the process. In a series of paintings sketched in watery ink, Mandler pulled imagery from first-aid pamphlets and books in which soldiers’ rescues are simulated pictorially; she renders the delicate forms of their bodies suspended in space, pointing again to the limitations of the human body. Her installation work, Today: 153 Sheets (2008), is comprised of magazines and newspapers left behind by her mother after she passed away, re-pulped to express both decay and regeneration.