International Print Center New York
The uniting factor in IPCNY’s New Prints 2011/ Autumn exhibition, was an acute awareness of prints, not as the disembodied free-floating images of Walter Benjamin’s theorizing, but as physically present, even demanding, entities. Including the work of some 51 artists, from the eminent Royal Academician Norman Ackroyd (a beautiful, atmospheric etching of the looming rocks of Stac an Armin off the Scottish coast) to current graduate students, the show made links across generations and hemispheres. Alex Katz, Joan Snyder, and William Kentridge all contributed impeccable, professionally printed works, but most things were printed and published by the artists themselves. Brooklyn was well represented, but so was Lawrence, Kansas and suburban Detroit, as well as Poland, Australia, and the UK.
Sigmar Polke was never just working with the image; he was always working on the object, and his photographs do what great art does – represent a subject by embodying its essence in the art object.
The Art Institute of Chicago
Concurrent exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago examine the very different roles that printed images can adopt in wartime: one is a historical survey of prints depicting the experience of war; the other is the first major American exhibition of posters created by the Soviet TASS agency—one for each day of the Soviet engagement against Germany in World War II.
Jack Rutberg Fine Arts, Los Angeles, CA
By Josh Bricker
In a set of twenty-year old etchings, George Condo channeled Picasso, Miles Davis, and Saturday morning cartoons.
The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX
By S.E. Smith
The Blanton Museum digs into its collection to survey the art of the portrait, from Charles V to Farrah Fawcett.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
By Jay Clarke
The politics of geography and process intersect across borders and decades in the thoughtful and thought-provoking exhibition on view at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) “Impressions from South Africa, 1965 to Now.” Drawn entirely from MoMA’s permanent collection, the exhibition points to MoMA’s slow and steady effort to dismantle its reputation as a bastion of high Modernism and to incorporate broader definitions of global indigenous modernisms.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
By John Ganz
An exhaustive and ambitious showcase for MoMA’s extensive collection of German Expressionist prints, containing some 250 works by more than fifty artists: iconic woodcuts, intaglio prints, drawings, posters, paintings, illustrated books and magazines, from die Brücke through Neue Sachlichkeit.
Grand Palais, Paris to June 20, 2011; Musée Fabre, Montpellier, July 7 to October 16, 2011
This comprehensive exhibition, including ten of Redon’s twelve lithographic portfolios, reveals him as a fundamentally graphic artist who not only exploited the practical reproductive potential of print but also found that the rigors of black and white encapsulated his dark visions with unique intensity.
Pace Prints (Chelsea), New York
Nicola López churns rigid industrial forms into swirling organic masses in her recent monoprints on view at Pace Prints.
Gallery Simon, Seoul
By Chaewon Kim
As she has since 1999, Airan Kang continues to extend the boundary of her own work by adopting new technology. Her work takes books as its subject matter, to explore the duality of reality and virtuality, actuality and representation and the epistemological confusion arising on the border between them.
Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York
By Josh Bricker
Arturo Herrera, whose work relies on the interlocking of tightly constructed collage elements from printed matter and intricate overpainting, appears to be in the midst of a personal aesthetic revolution.
The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University
Thomas Rowlandson’s famously raunchy view of Regency England helped launch political satire as we know it. An exhibition at the Block Museum paired Rowlandson with modern satirists who also employ print to tell us about the world in which we live.
Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, MN
Lithographs from the Tamarind Institute at the Highpoint Center for Printmaking in Minneapolis: slick and sincere.
The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Henrik Olesen’s first solo museum exhibition in the United States.
Gavin Brown's Enterprise, New York
Rikrit Tiravanija’s serves soup and prints t-shirts in FEAR EATS THE SOUL at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise in New York.
Des Lee Gallery, Washington University, St Louis
SGC International—formerly the Southern Graphics Council—held its annual conference in March at Washington University in St. Louis. Marie Heilich reviews the juried exhibition of prints and (finger waggle quotation marks) “prints”.
Gallery 18 (Reykjavik) at the Armory Show, New York
By Matt Nichols
The late Icelandic artist’s work, rarely seen in the US, was one of the high points of this year’s Armory Show.
Augen Gallery, Portland OR
A recent exhibition of etchings by this quirky Northwest figurative artist.
