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From left, Laylah Ali, Untitled, 2005, Colored pencil, graphite on paper, 11-5/8x8-1/4"; Tara Donovan, Untitled II, 2004, Etching on paper, 14-1/8x14-1/8" |
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Paper Trail Shows Walker Print, Drawing Acquisitions from Last Decade |
Walker Art Center Moving from the 20th to the 21st century has had a potent impact on the art of our time. Many artists working today have embraced the new millennium as an era where traditional boundaries between disciplines are more fluid than ever before. With works on paper this is particularly apparent, with many artists using printmaking, drawing, collage, and other paper-based methods as an arena for remarkable innovation. Walker Art Center has a long history of collecting and exhibiting works on paper, which comprise a significant portion of its collection. Paper Trail: A Decade of Acquisitions features a broad selection of prints and drawings collected over the past ten years that addresses in many ways the means by which contemporary artists have explored notions of time, place, and narrative through the intimacy of paper. In those ten years, many artists well-versed in traditional methods of printmaking such as etching, lithography, screenprint, and woodcut have turned to less conventional approaches to these techniques, which have allowed a remarkable range of aesthetic possibilities. Drawing continues to be more broadly defined, with artists employing everything from pen and ink to elaborately layered, multimedia compositions and large-scale environments. Increasingly, artists are using these media in their work, not merely as an end in itself, but often in tandem with other techniques as a vehicle by which to create conceptual works and installations. |
In Paper Trail, this spirit of experimentation is seen in works such as Glenn Ligon's Untitled (Crowd/The Fire Next Time), 2000, a screenprint made from coal crystals; Gabriel Orozco's Polvo imprezo, 2002, a series of etchings made from dust laid on printing plates, and DeLuxe, 2005, a portfolio of prints by Ellen Gallagher that incorporates such unconventional materials as Plasticine, glitter, and magazine cut-outs to create mural-scaled tableaus examining social and historical issues related to race and gender. Many works in the exhibition are images grouped in portfolios and series, a strategy that allows for a powerful sense of original and often unexpected storytelling. Included in the exhibition are artists such as Rachel Whiteread, whose photolithographs of London buildings in various stages of demolition for a potent story of constantly evolving urban landscape. Other works on view utilize found images of materials to comment on global culture, as seen in a series of drawings on newspapers by Japanese artist Kaoru Arima; or German artist Thomas Hirschhorn's collaged constructions of news magazine images, plastic, tape, and ballpoint pen. Many of the works included in the exhibition are new to the Walker collection and have never before been exhibited. Works by a number of artists represented are on view concurrently in other Walker galleries, affording visitors the opportunity to examine their diverse activities across media and through time. |
From left, Ellen Gallagher, DeLuxe, 2004/2005, aquatint, dry-point, photogravure, spit-bite, lithography, screenprint, embossing, tattoo machine engraving, laser-cutting, collage, crystals, cut paper, enamel, glitter, gold leaf, gouache, graphite, oil, plasticine, polymer medium, pomade, toy eyeballs, watercolor, velvet on paper; edition 11/20 Published by Two Palms Press, New York Elizabeth Peyton, John Lennon, 1996, Ink on paper, 13-1/4x11". |
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