Favorites | IFPDA Spring Fair
A small group of compelling printed works where wilderness is rendered in woodcut, resistance acted out through screenprint and views offered both inwards and outward.
Tom Hammick
Outskirts Day, 2015
122 x 156 cm
Edition variable reduction woodcut.
Signed in pencil and numbered from the edition of 12.
While galleries and museum start opening back up around the US, I have to say I hope that fairs and gallery spaces continue to include online components to their programming. Between tuning into Zoom conversations had in other cities, or watching the astonishing Mellon Lecture Series that Harvard University’s Jennifer Roberts is currently delivering through the National Gallery of Art’s website (a series which would otherwise have been an in-person only event) this sort of access has indeed been one positive thing that has come from the pandemic.
On that note, this week we’ve been enjoying exploring the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Spring Fair online and have chosen some favorites.
Our bookmarking spree began with a small grouping of prints that were all wild outdoor scenes rendered through woodcut; Helen Frankenthaler’s Japanese Maple…Tom Hammick’s Tamino in the Wilderness. The draw of these images made immediate sense; these were the kinds of outdoor spaces that provided escape from the cloistered, indoor life of lockdown over the last 18 months. Spaces you could safely be in the outdoors without fear of encountering other humans.
The next few prints diverted from those natural scenes and instead were visuals that hinged on strict systems of geometry; Jeffrey Gibson’s A Time For Change…Ellen Lesperance’s The Final Path of Feminye. There is an obvious structure and logic to these pieces but those systems are put into service to an equally important social commentary. Lesperance is well-known for her ongoing series of drawings that map out the knit patterns of sweaters worn by womxn activists through the decades. While Gibson - a Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee - has created a print that clearly calls for a change in the United State’s policies of ongoing oppression and exclusion towards its indigenous population. There are wonderful images of the printing process for their piece on Tandem Press’ Instagram.
In that vein of crucial social commentary through print, we were thrilled to encounter Nona Faustine’s work for the first time. The Brooklyn-based photographer has produced an incredible series of screenprints with Two Palms Press that depict monuments to American lives and histories dissected by a distracting and persistent glitch; there has been an error in the playback and the “tape” is hopefully beginning to disintegrate.
