We were just sent these great installation photographs of Eva Wylie installing her work at Gallery Joe in Philadephia. The exhibition, titled appropriate manipulate duplicate is a group show of print/digital-related work. With the recent posting about Eva’s work here, I thought it would be fulfilling to see these in progress [...]]]>

We were just sent these great installation photographs of Eva Wylie installing her work at Gallery Joe in Philadephia. The exhibition, titled appropriate manipulate duplicate is a group show of print/digital-related work. With the recent posting about Eva’s work here, I thought it would be fulfilling to see these in progress shots of her site specific screen print work.

The exhibit features the work of William Betts, Gil Kerlin, Ati Maier, Andrew Millner as well as Eva Wiley, and I should have a post covering all the work in the show in the coming weeks. This exhibit will be up until April 25th, so if you are in town for Southern Graphics try to catch this one.

Thanks to Holly Holly Hobby Hobby’s Anni Altshuler for this scoop.

The Medium Resistance exhibition, probably one of the largest Indepent projects associated with Philagrafika, just opened in the Ice Box space of the Crane Arts building. Co-Curated by Richard Hricko, Philip Glahn and Nick Kripal. The three Tyler faculty have each drawn from their own expertise and interests to put together [...]]]>

The Medium Resistance exhibition, probably one of the largest Indepent projects associated with Philagrafika, just opened in the Ice Box space of the Crane Arts building. Co-Curated by Richard Hricko, Philip Glahn and Nick Kripal. The three Tyler faculty have each drawn from their own expertise and interests to put together a show that draws from a gamut of talent, ranging from art start to local favorite. The curators describe the show as:

Medium Resistance examines contemporary works of craft and print that resist old-fashioned divisions of high art and artisanship, reassessing the mediums’ expressive, communicative, and material possibilities. Ceramic multiples and posters, digital images and books, to name just a few examples, straddle the lines between art, craft, and mass production, exploring each format’s potential for participation and dissemination, aesthetic, social, and technical labor.

This is very compelling show; in truth I’ve gone to see it three times and there is enough thought provoking work in the show to keep even my addled attention span engaged. Some of the work fits awkwardly into the cavernous Icebox space but for the most part the bulk of the show occupies the space better than anything in recent memory.

To see artist by artist shots follow the jump.

Marc Herbst, co-editor of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest.

Below is Francesc Ruiz, a printeresting favorite.

I was totally blown away by these pop-up books and photographs by Colette Fu.

These cool ceramic/photographs are by David Rhys Jones.

Some great relief prints by Martin Mazorra of Cannon Ball Press.

I stand in awe of Piper Shepard’s three insane tapestries.

Andree-Anne Dupuis Bourret’s great installation you first read about here.

A few pictures from the Cut and Paint installation.

Snappy printed things by artists who worked at the Women’s Studio Workshop.

International Design Clinic’s enigmatic projection box project.

Above and below are images of Leslie Mutchler’s digital collage prints.

Work from the Atlas of Radical Cartography, below.

The collaboration between Jason Scuilla (on the wall) and Dylan Beck (on the Floor).

Carl Pope covered this large wall with his iconic textual broadsides.

The prolific Eva Wylie created these fabric print quilt-like forms.

Old salty snacks himself, Chris Kline made a poster for the exhibit.

If you are coming to town for Southern Graphics try to make it out to see this one.

]]> http://www.printeresting.org/2010/03/14/philagrafika-2010-medium-resistance/feed/ 0 http://www.printeresting.org/2010/03/10/west-elm-loves-them-some-prints-or-not/ http://www.printeresting.org/2010/03/10/west-elm-loves-them-some-prints-or-not/#comments Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:12:47 +0000 amze http://www.printeresting.org/2010/03/10/west-elm-loves-them-some-prints-or-not/

West Elm’s near-monthly circular, Design With Style 10/March: Print Shop makes some bold claims, that the Brooklyn-based Modern home furnishing company doesn’t quite back-up.

Like West Elm I agree that prints do have power, even as the warm and whimsical varieties, but they are going to [...]]]>

West Elm’s near-monthly circular, Design With Style 10/March: Print Shop makes some bold claims, that the Brooklyn-based Modern home furnishing company doesn’t quite back-up.

Like West Elm I agree that prints do have power, even as the warm and whimsical varieties, but they are going to have to do better than some printed towels to add pop or perk to this nest. Don’t get me wrong, who doesn’t like printed textiles? But it’s not like West Elm is exactly the Fabric Workshop when it comes to innovative textile design.

Strangely, the only non-textile print to be found is the enigmatic ‘Naive botanical sketch’ that is ’screen printed in charcoal on glass’. Say What? Oh well, I guess I won’t be adding style to my nest with leafs from their book.

A recent trip to the local japanese street food-style restaurant yielded this find: Auto Land Printed Bisuits by the Meiji snack company. How could anyone resist that world-weary car face?

You may be familiar with Meiji from their popular chocolate mushroom treats or equally print-tasty Hello Panda cookies, which are [...]]]>

A recent trip to the local japanese street food-style restaurant yielded this find: Auto Land Printed Bisuits by the Meiji snack company. How could anyone resist that world-weary car face?

You may be familiar with Meiji from their popular chocolate mushroom treats or equally print-tasty Hello Panda cookies, which are filled with a chocolate-like substance and printed with pandas in action.

This photo of winter sports oriented Hello Panda treats is via Pop Kiss Kiss.

Back to the Auto Land cooky taste test, while they have some really great transportation images printed on them (see the full cookie gallery after the jump), they are more akin to a square ritz cracker than any biscuit you are likely to find at any Bob Evans. For now I can only highly recommend the Hello Panda line of printed snacks even though their graphics have a less obvious relationship between form and content.

After some research, it seems Meiji’s only real competition in the printed snack food market is the Belgium Biscuit Line company. They seem to be aiming more at the corporate schwag market than the large demographic of folks hankering for some printed snacks.

Fun names to learn!

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #33 is a full blown regional newspaper. McSweeney’s literary journal has always had a keen sense of design and often publishes some very lovely printed objects that straddle the line between art project and literary glee fest. Issue #33, alternately titled the San Francisco Panarama is great example [...]]]>

McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern #33 is a full blown regional newspaper. McSweeney’s literary journal has always had a keen sense of design and often publishes some very lovely printed objects that straddle the line between art project and literary glee fest. Issue #33, alternately titled the San Francisco Panarama is great example of what a city newspaper could be. In their own words:

Issue 33 of McSweeney’s Quarterlyis a one-time only, Sunday-edition-sized newspaper—the San Francisco Panorama. It has news and sports and arts coverage, and comics (sixteen pages of glorious, full-color comics, from Chris Ware and Dan Clowes and Art Spiegelman and many others besides) and a magazine, and is basically an attempt to demonstrate all the great things print journalism can (still) do, with as much first-rate writing and reportage and design (and posters and games and on-location Antarctic travelogues) as we could fit in there. It features journalism from Andrew Sean Greer, fiction from George Saunders and Roddy Doyle, dispatches from Afghanistan, and much, much more.

But don’t take their word for it, read the San Francisco Chronicle article here, or continue reading this picture laden post. One of the most striking things about the paper is that it is an un-ironic project intended to inspire and model how to save newspapers.

Front page.

I haven’t seen graphics this good since I read an issue of Good Magazine while standing in line at Whole Foods.

A Sunday NY Times Style Magazine and a full on Book Review magazine.

Don’t get me started about the Comics section. It’s full of great work and is full color and huge. Below is Dan Clowes’ surreal family space drama, The Christian Astronauts.

Art Spiegelman’s Remember Childhood.

Chris Ware, above.

A weekly-style strip by Seth, above.

The surprisingly funny children’s activity page, above.

Chef Ryan Farr demonstrates how to butcher a sheep.

Chef David Chang explains ramen with a multi-step graphics.

SF restaurant guide that looks like an Ed Ruscha book.

Sports.

Double arts spread.

Puzzles too sophisticated for this printmaker.

An amazing chart tracking the SF music scene.

Other useful graphics.

Without a doubt it’s the best $16 dollars I’ve spent since I bought my wool socks.

Who Doesn’t love bound printed stuff? The Print Center sponsored Open Book as a way to model ideas addressed in their Philagrafika 2010: The Graphic Unconscious exhibition. Needless to say most attendees walked away with a stack of books and Temporary Services (above) did their best to make sure no one [...]]]>

Who Doesn’t love bound printed stuff? The Print Center sponsored Open Book as a way to model ideas addressed in their Philagrafika 2010: The Graphic Unconscious exhibition. Needless to say most attendees walked away with a stack of books and Temporary Services (above) did their best to make sure no one walked away empty handed.

The Print Center describes the event:

This event will bring together the artist collectives Space 1026 and Temporary Services, who will be joined by the artists’ bookstore Printed Matter. Each will give presentations on their publications and how they relate to their artistic practice. It will be a wonderful opportunity to collect books, meet the artists and have them personally inscribe their books.

Above is Salem Collo-Julin running the Temporary Services table.

Printed Matter, the New York Artist book institution is well represented with a ton of books.

Dexter Sinister, not surprisingly had some real gems, including their Last Newspaper project from Performa 09.

Space 1026, the local favorites, were in effect with a great collection of tasty hand-made items.

Space 1026, Temporary Services (seen below) and Printed Matter each spoke about their publishing endeavors and took questions from the crowd.

Katie Baldwin’s recent exhibition in the Print Center is a mighty fine example of contemporary moku hanga wood block printing. The show covers three bodies of work, Throwing our Things in the River, Things left behind, and another selection of prints of images of box designs that seem contain oblique narratives. [...]]]>

Katie Baldwin’s recent exhibition in the Print Center is a mighty fine example of contemporary moku hanga wood block printing. The show covers three bodies of work, Throwing our Things in the River, Things left behind, and another selection of prints of images of box designs that seem contain oblique narratives. Each collection are moku hanga wood block prints (multi-block & hand-printed) often with letter press text overprinted. The prints intimate in size and are printed in small editions. The text below in an excerpt from the artist’s statement, and it enumerates the magical thinking that provides an interior structure of these strange and magical images.

My images create a visual narrative, bearing witness to both the ordinary and extraordinary events of human life. I work in series; my prints complete each other as a non-linear account that attests to the complexity of the human condition. In this work, I am utilizing a perspective based on multiple points of view. I am interested in challenging the unity of time by the defiance of scale and by showing several moments at once. Daily life intersects with themes of work, relationships, culture, natural disasters and dumb luck.

This series is titled, Things Lost Along the Way.

11″ x 14″

\

One of my criteria for compelling work is if it makes me want to go to my studio and make things, and this show definitely had me digging for my wood carving set.

The Philagrafika 2010: Graphic Unconscious exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts (PAFA) is amazing. Curator, Julien Robson makes excellent use of large, well lit new gallery. The Philagrafika site describes the curatorial project below:

..[At] PAFA The Graphic Unconscious presents the work of seven international artists who take conventionally [...]]]>

The Philagrafika 2010: Graphic Unconscious exhibit at the Pennsylvania Academy for the Fine Arts (PAFA) is amazing. Curator, Julien Robson makes excellent use of large, well lit new gallery. The Philagrafika site describes the curatorial project below:

..[At] PAFA The Graphic Unconscious presents the work of seven international artists who take conventionally recognized mediums and treat them in new and imaginative ways. Working with woodcuts, Christiane Baumgartner and Orit Hofshi realize the woodcut’s potential on an immense scale, while the Indonesian artist group Tromarama turns each cut of the wooden panel into the frame of a stop-motion animation. Mark Bradford collages together found posters and then sands this surface to excavate other forms of information hidden underneath, while Pepón Osorio prints on confetti in a work that turns two-dimensional print into three-dimensional sculpture. Kiki Smith collages lithographs on handmade paper into large-scale poetic works, while Qui Zhijie carves traditional Chinese calligraphy from concrete blocks that, after being printed, stand as sculptures in their own right alongside the wall-hung images.

(Post is now updated with some new images.)

Mark Bradford’s suite of excellent work for the exhibition.

More well known for his installation work, Philly-based, Pepón Osorio’s confetti print, at first glance looks like the the sweepings collected after a parade, the x-ray image of the artist’s late mothers head only emerges for the patient viewer. Osorio explained that it took a lot of convincing to get the commercial billboard printer to run his pile of confetti through their printers.

(Side Note: At this point the PAFA guards stopped my not so illicit photography of the exhibition artwork and opening festivities; for reasons that escape me they were dubious of my journalist credentials. After waiting several weeks for promised installation shots from either PAFA or Philagrafika I’ve resorted to just swiping images from their respective websites which you see below.) ((post now updated with some installation images, thanks Orit!))

I was lucky enough to meet Christiane Baumgartner at the opening (Thanks Francesc!), and she was kind enough to tolerate my print geek line of questioning. Her woodcut cuts are informed by video stills of documentary footage that she takes and culls. And then these insanely large woodblock prints are entirely cut and printed by hand. Each print is hand-printed over the course of one very long day. Totally amazing.

Qui Zhijie’s ephemeral stele rubbings are powerful and.. well.. very cool.

Orit Hofshi’s “If the tread is an echo” Woodcut, markers drawing and stone stick tusche rubbing on carved pine wood panels and hand made Japanese paper. Dimensions: 136″height x 287″width x 36″deep. This amazing and massive works dominate your view as you enter the gallery. Note way the image moves from carved block to printed page. Also very cool is the illuminated print on the ceiling.

Kiki Smith (maybe you’ve heard of her?) has a range of compelling new work on view.

Tromarama’s work is below. These folks’ work is amazing and best viewed in person to be believed.

]]> http://www.printeresting.org/2010/03/01/philagrafika-2010-pafa/feed/ 2 http://www.printeresting.org/2010/03/01/philagrafika-2010-philadelphia-museum-of-art/ http://www.printeresting.org/2010/03/01/philagrafika-2010-philadelphia-museum-of-art/#comments Mon, 01 Mar 2010 15:39:31 +0000 amze http://www.printeresting.org/?p=12133

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the Graphic Unconscious sites for Philagrafika 2010. The exhibition there, while modest in it’s square footage, comprises some of the most interesting conceptual work in the related exhibitions. The curatorial statement on the Philagrafika site describes the show, expertly curated by Shelley Langdale, [...]]]>

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is one of the Graphic Unconscious sites for Philagrafika 2010. The exhibition there, while modest in it’s square footage, comprises some of the most interesting conceptual work in the related exhibitions. The curatorial statement on the Philagrafika site describes the show, expertly curated by Shelley Langdale, below:

Concepts of imprinting, multiplicity, reproduction, and seriality, as well as printed images and print techniques are frequently used by artists who do not think of themselves as printmakers. As artistic vocabularies have expanded and mixing media has become commonplace, artists have increasingly drawn from inherent characteristics of the print to achieve specific aesthetic and expressive goals.

In keeping with its role as a major repository of the work of Marcel Duchamp, the “father” of Conceptual Art, the museum will feature exhibitions by two artists who translate aspects of printmaking into other mediums, pushing the conceptual boundaries typically associated with the print. Óscar Muñoz explores the ephemeral implications of the imprint with two projects: a new installation of portraits printed in pigment floating on water (shown in-process) and a suite of video portraits that involve a variation of this innovative printing technique. Using imagery inspired by Japanese cultural sources that range from traditional woodcuts to contemporary comics and animations, Tabaimo continues her examination of the complexities of everyday life with the U.S. debut of a 2007 video installation.

The first rooms of the exhibition presents the two major projects by Óscar Muñoz described above. All I can say is that they both breathtakingly beautiful, playfully clever and ultimately existentially sad.

Video stills from Tabaimo’s work is below. While much younger and speaking from a very different cultural context than Muñoz, Tabaimo’s work also pushes us to look inward with questions about how comfortable we are in our own skin.

(Side note: The above images were culled from the Philagrafika and PMA websites. Due to the Museum policy photos could not be taken of the exhibition. We had hoped that some ‘behind the scenes’ and installation shots would be made available for this post but they never materialized.)

The images below are from the curatorial lectures presented by José Roca and Shelley Langdale. The lectures were lively and allowed a wide ranging audience an accessible point of entry for the work in the show.

What followed after these lectures was perhaps the most unusual artist talk I’ve seen in a while, Victor Munoz, Shelley Langdale and Jose Roca conducted a three way conversation in English and Spanish and Q & A with the surprisingly bilingual audience. Some what stilted but often enlightening and amusing all the proceedings were translated by José Roca.