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By M. Brian Tichenor, Raun Thorp
David Musgrave’s finely wrought drawings investigate transmutation: his “plane” and “golem” drawings depict common materials—folded and torn paper, children’s string constructions—arranged and charged with figurative power. In his new set of prints, Musgrave extends the mimetic prowess of these meticulous trompe l’œils, blurring the line between abstraction and figuration.
Jürgen Partenheimer describes the process of making prints as if he is discovering another new landscape: ”Like atolls, islands and the jetties of foreign/landscapes, they emerge from furrowed/ ranks. Evidence and traces/ an archaeology of imagined pictures,/ exposed and ready for printing, /crowning their presence.” Read more.
These prints mark Gert and Uwe Tobias’ first lithographs and first project with Galerie Sabine Knust. Best known for their large-scale woodcuts, the Tobias twins have drawn extensively on their cultural heritage, incorporating the decorative properties and materials of Romanian folk-art as well as the twisted gothic fantasies associated with Transylvania.
Tobias Till is a young artist whose work can be seen as following in the grand British tradition of the urban color linocut. Most of his prints are large-scale affairs stuffed with multiple narratives and specific landmarks identifying corners of London.
Prints may have grown ever larger, brighter, flashier over the past decades, but this small, quirky, black-and-white etching was one of the most discussed new releases at the IFPDA Print Fair in November. It is a testament to the fascination that can still be exerted by a few square inches of deftly handled ink on paper. Read more.
Willie Cole’s art is universal yet profoundly personal. He transforms conventional objects into works of art that conjure collective memories while referencing the artist’s personal identity. Each of the five intaglio impressions of ironing boards in his recent series Five Beauties Rising is a poetic document, recording both the singular existence of a specific object and the larger historical narrative it represents.
In Kiki Smith’s notebook-size etchings clouds roil and loom over choppy waters. The rich tonal quality of the gray scale in these prints comes from the aquatint process used to produce them. After the printing, Smith painted the boulders and crags in the foreground with watercolors, giving the hard forms a many-hued softness.
Though Simmons has only recently started to make prints, he is a natural. His interest in the troubled re-presentation of the commonplace and his monochromatic natural strengths of printmaking.
Shazia Sikander’s art is one of assimilation—the integration of incongruent parts into something coherent, though not homogenous. This happens on multiple levels: the technical; the personal; and the formal.
Patrick Scott often makes use of precious metals in his non-representational paintings. Spare in design, these works tend to feature simple shapes that allow their materiality to stand out.
