The relationship of art and craft has long been a familiar minefield for printmakers. Where one ends and the other begins is a difficult line to draw and print’s exact place in the mix is highly suspect. Curatorial team of Richard Hricko, Philip Glahn, & Nick Kripal are investigating this murky area with the exhibition Medium Resistance: Revolutionary Tendencies in Print and Craft. Through a great line-up of artists (including a number of Printeresting favorites), they’ll question “the old-fashioned divisions of high art and artisanship.” Here’s a bit from the curatorial statement…
Recent discourse tends to force print and craft works into not-so-recent, even outright conservative categories: as fine art, they must be autonomous, original, and auratic; as artisanship, they must rely on tactility, skill, and apprenticeship. In both instances, crafts and printmaking are defined in defensive opposition to the forces and effects of mass culture, reproducing an old-fashioned binary in which art and artisanship provide a substitute sphere of “authentic” creative experience rather than a critical engagement with cultural production at large.
The show opens in March at the Ice Box at Crane Arts and will be on view for both the SGC conference in later March and the NSECA conference in early April. Printeresting will definitely have some pics of the show when the time comes but until then, you can check out the Medium Resistance website for a preview of what should be a strong exhibition.
