Contemporary Mokuhanga at Cade Tompkins Projects

Cade Tompkins Projects featured a printmaking exhibition by a group of artists whose work expands the boundaries of mokuhanga, the traditional Japanese woodcut process. Mokuhanga is achieved with use of water-based inks, hand-printing techniques and Japanese-style printing papers. The prints selected for this show present contemporary imagery and vernacular. Some works adhere strictly to the traditional process and others combine techniques such as etching and hand-stitching.

Highlights include Yoonmi Nam’s Oishii, a masterfully minimal image of cut flowers arranged in an everyday drink carton; Daniel Heyman’s hand-printed book, Sing with a Lovely Voice, which presents testimonies of former inmates at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq; David Curcio’s MS.45, a nun with a gun, red lips and red nails; Stella Ebner’s silhouetted The Hunters which achieves a deep space with expert layering; Allison Bianco’s The Old Jamestown Bridge picturing the 90s dynamite explosion of the rickety Rhode Island landmark; and Hiroki Morinoue’s Dragonfly Pond, a vibrant pseudo-landscape that exploits the grain of the woodblock to stunning success.

Artists in the exhibition include Katie Baldwin, Allison Bianco, David Curcio, Stella Ebner, Kevin Frances, Takuji Hamanaka, Lois Harada, Daniel Heyman, Hiroki Morinoue, Yoonmi Nam, Serena Perrone, Eva Pietzcker, and April Vollmer.

Commedia: New Prints 2015 / Autumn at IPCNY

Images and text Courtesy of IPCNY: International Print Center New York presents Commedia: New Prints 2015/Autumn from November 19 – January 16, 2016 in its gallery at 508 West 26th St, 5th Floor. Commedia was selected by Tomas Vu, artist and Artistic Director of the Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies (NY). The exhibition consists of sixty-eight prints by sixty artists selected from over 2,000 submissions. On view during IPCNY’s 15th Anniversary year, Commedia is the fifty-second presentation of IPCNY’s New Prints Program, a series of juried exhibitions organized three times each year featuring prints made within the past twelve months. An illustrated brochure with a curatorial essay by Mr. Vu accompanies the exhibition.

In his words: “The title of the show, Commedia, is the original title of Dante’s Divine Comedy….Dante’s embrace and elevation of humble materials, and the specificity and personality they created, are reflected in the works I have selected….As the show has come together, it has been wonderful to see the works start to speak to each other….I see conversations starting in one place and finishing in another, I see the categories blur and then come back into focus, and I am taken to the same place Dante transported me to: wandering between states, striving for ascension.”

Artists are:  Todd Anderson, Kathy Aoki, Evan Bellantone, Marcin Bialas, Allison Bianco, Mary Lynn Blasutta, Sebastiaan Bremer, Noah Breuer, Patrick Casey, Nathan Catlin, Phillip Chen, Matthew Colaizzo, Nick Conbere, Aurélien Couput, David Curcio, Kara Dunne, Scott Espeseth, Megan Foster, Carl Fudge, Rebecca Gilbert, Kevin Haas, Ellen Heck, Amira Hegazy, John Holmgren, Mary Hood, Cary Hulbert, Eeva Huotari, Fleming Jeffries, Crystal Johnson, Leekyung Kang, Kamil Kocurek, Andrew Kosten, Andrew Kozlowski, Sara Langworthy, Yujin Lee, Michael Loderstedt, Kate MacNeil, Barbara Madsen, Renee Magnanti, Nicole Maloof, Jessica Meuninck-Ganger, Barbara Milman, Anne Muntges, Lorella Paleni, Kurt Pammer, Margherita Paoletti, Jill Parisi, Alyssa Piro, Kasey Ramirez, Mark Rice, Jenny Robinson, Jungyeon Roh, Michelle Rozic, David Sandlin, Carrie Scanga, William Skerritt, Evan Summer, Rob Swainston, Clare Szydlowski, and Sergey Zlotnikov.

Print Love: Celebrating the Print Center at 100

Zeppelin was acquired by the Philadelphia Museum of Art as a gift of The Print Center, Philadelphia. The print was displayed in an exhibition showcasing a selection of works gifted to the museum over The Print Center's 100 years as a fine arts and printmaking institution.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art presents an exhibition of forty-some works culled from more than 1600 donated by The Print Center to the museum since 1929.  Curated by Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings Shelley Langdale, the diverse assortment of works on view—from an etching by Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558-1617) to a lithograph by Jasper Johns (born 1930)—was chosen to highlight the range of The Print Center’s contributions to the Museum’s important collection of American and European prints. This installation commemorates the Museum’s close working relationship with The Print Center in promoting the study and appreciation of fine prints and photographs. Print Love: Celebrating The Print Center at 100 is presented as part of The Print Center 100. On view October 2, 2015 – January 3, 2016.

Interview with Nafis White for Raid the Database 2

Raid the Database 2 is a permanent on-line exhibition hosted by the RISD Museum and curated by Nafis White, based on Andy Warhol's 1969 curatorial project, Raid the Icebox, an exhibition of objects in the RISD Museum's archives. Nafis divided the works into 4 categories: Landscape, Abstract, Figurative, and Text and interviewed one artist from each section. See the interview above and read her curatorial statement here.