The Marianne Boesky Gallery and the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies at Columbia University are pleased to present a selection of the Center's publications produced since 1998. Since its inception in 1995, the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies has published a substantial body of prints. With a generous endowment from Janet and LeRoy Neiman to support its efforts, the Center has played a significant role as a university press shop and a contemporary print publisher for emerging to established artists. True to its own pedagogical role at the university, the professional shop has brought together master printmakers to collaborate with artists chosen by the Center's Artistic Advisory committee. The Neiman Center offers its artists an opportunity to explore a variety of printmaking media: relief printing, chine colle, intaglio, offset lithography, photogravure, stone and plate lithography, photo lithography and screen printing.
Wherever possible, every effort has been made to present works in their entirety. Terry Winters/Ben Marcus' collaborative portfolio, an unbound book of text and image, Turbulence Skins, 2004 is installed as a complete work with 40 images plus title and colophon pages. Ellen Gallagher's first print portfolio, Untitled, 2000, features an assortment of ten delicately rendered abstractions on Japanese paper. Works by William Kentridge include a suite of eight intaglio's entitled Typewriter (II-IX), 2003. The first two works produced by the Center were created by Kiki Smith and will be on view. Smith utilized the advantages of being at Columbia and their resources by using the telescope at the Astronomy Department to shoot stills of the moon. These became the foundation of an accordion fold artist book Tidal, 1999 and a triptych on view titled Moon Three, 1998. Kara Walker's project, an extensive portfolio, is represented by two of the fifteen images from Harper's Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated), 2005. Selected as one of the best of the season editions for 2005 by Art on Paper, this group of silkscreen and offset lithography prints marks the first time the artist has united her trademark silhouette cutouts with historical documentation.
Gregory Amenoff, Elliot Green, Brad Kahlhamer, and Heimo Wallner, are artists whose draftsmanship is key to their image making. Amenoff, who is also a professor at the School of the Arts, is represented by two large intaglios, Chianti I and Chianti II, which incorporate hand coloring and delve into the abstracted landscape. A large wall of 12 silkscreen panels, Wallpaper I, 2006, will be shown. By Heimo Wallner, an artist based in Austria, the work echoes his wall drawings, which were made in the exhibition, Déjà Vu at the Neiman Gallery in November, 2002.
Prints by Polly Apfelbaum, Carl Fudge, Shahzia Sikander,and Sarah Sze demonstrate the flexibility of silkscreen to build multiple layers. This is the first installation of the Center's newest publication, a portfolio by Apfelbaum titled Flags of Revolt and Defiance, 2006. The portfolio consists of thirty-one silkscreen flag images, which relate to her series of watercolor drawings installed at the Lodz Bienniale in 2004. Apfelbaum chooses to reproduce flag imagery of past political parties and defunct states and superimposes her own flower insignia on top of the appropriated image. Fudge has also taken silkscreen to its maximum technical state by making works using multiple screens to produce lush fragmented compositions in Tatooed Blue and They're Everywhere, both 2002. This highlights the crisp quality of silkscreen imitating a paper cut-out.
Other artists have chosen to work in the iconic imagery of figure and portraiture. LeRoy Neiman, continues to define the heroic in his rendering of baseball figures in a suite of five spitbite intaglios. Three younger artists, Ernesto Caivano, Tim Gardner,and Dana Schutz, are all recent graduates from Columbia's print program. Schutz, primarily working in relief, will be represented by two works: Self Eater, chosen as a best edition for the 2005 season by Art on Paper, and Untitled (Poisoned Man), 2006, an homage to the stricken Ukraine politician Viktor Yuschenko. The sales of the latter benefit the Agnes Martin Fellowship fund at Columbia's School of the Arts.
Within this spread of artistic talent, each print project, whether an individual work or portfolio, shows the diversity of the contemporary print process at the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies. Marianne Boesky Gallery and the LeRoy Neiman Center for Print Studies salute this special collaborative spirit and their participating artists, master printers, students, faculty and Center staff with this exhibition.