The first stop was Moma. We saw a new exhibition of the Slavs and Tatars. The exhibition was behind two huge beautiful rugs that opened as curtains. Inside, was a very dark room light up by four neon green lights hanging from the ceiling and some black lights on the underside of benches. The benches ran along two walls and were covered in literature based on the Slavs and Tatars. In the center was a fountain and on the far walls were two huge prints.
While there, I flipped through two of the books on the benches. One text spoke about a certain noise in a language formed by the sounds of the letters "Khhhhh". They explained that it had special meanings in different languages and how only people who spoke certain languages were able to make that noise. I believe thats the whole idea behind the "MOTHER TONGUES & FATHER THROAT" print.
I found the exhibition to be very interesting space. The benches, sound of the fountain, and reading was very meditative. Yet, if you stop focusing on those things and just looked around the room, it was extremely chaotic due to the lighting and agressive prints. I found that if you tried to look near the floor or at people's feet, your eyes couldn't focus on anything due to the lighting. I'm not sure if that was on purpose or just a coincidence. But there was a really interesting duality being created between meditation and chaos.After that exhibition, we went to MoMa's permanent print collection. That was a big change. This collection had your "normal" prints. The collection contained work by Warhol, Bourgeois, Matisse, Jasper Johns, Picasso, Clemins, Turrell, and many others. It was really nice to see less well known work by artists like Warhol, Matisse and Picasso. I also fell in love with a few pieces by Celmins and Turell.
Turell
Celmins
After that exhibition, I snuck away from the group for a little while and checked out an exhibition going on across the hall of the Quay Brothers. That exhibition was so awesome, for lack of a better word. When you walk in theres huge birch trees in the room and one of their silent films playing. The Quay brothers, I learned, did tons of films. Most starred many of their extremely creepy puppets they created. They also made absolutely beautiful drawings and prints. I really wish the rest of the class had gone to see it!
Our second stop was the studio of Brand X Editions. This studio was very different compared to the others we have been to so far. Unlike the past studios, Brand X does only commercial printing. Unlike other studios, they do oil based silk screening and use tons of chemicals and solvents. We got to see the extremely strenuous, time consuming process they go through to create silk screen prints for other artists. These prints are exact copies of the artist's work. It was really amazing to see how they are able to figure out how to create the same textures and brush strokes and imitate the hand behind each painting so exact.
I learned about tons of hints for silk screening that I never would have thought of. For example, having (at least) two people pulling a print if the screen is too large and taping down little pieces of foam to stop the screen from sticking to the print.
They also had two printshop cats! Unfortunately I didn't get to meet them, but I saw them from afar and they were adorable. But I really don't see how they could survive there with all the chemicals in the air.
Our final stop was the studio of Alpha Price. Her studio was half of a tiny room in a beautiful old building.
Her work was very interesting. I really enjoyed the piece she did with cutting an old iBook in half and carving into the screen. I wish she had shown more of her work though! I feel like we only saw four different things she had done, which was pretty disappointing.
Great to see that your comments are so comprehensive. I agree with you about the lighting at the Slavs and Tatars show: it did become distracting at some point, after all, it was supposed to be a reading room, right? But then I start to second-guess my own response, because I'm wondering if that quiet, meditative environment that's also somehow uncomfortable is supposed to make me feel out of place, which seems very much connected to the content being discussed by Slavs and Tatars. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteI got a laugh out of you referring to the print collection as "normal" prints. I believe I called them the "greatest hits," which is pretty much what one can expect from any museum print gallery like that one. And yes, it would have been nice to go through the Quay brothers' show, but we were on a relatively tight schedule and went over time as it was. Can't win them all.
It's important to note places like Brand X - strictly commercial shops that do not have "member artists" or anything like that. It's a business model, but one that basically every artist who is not trained as a printmaker relies on if they are going to try and do graphics. Even those of us who are trained as printmakers could stand to learn something from them, as you mentioned.