| Hecates's LabJune 17, 2010- August 6, 2010
HECATE A Greco-Roman goddess associated with transformation, magic, and crossroads.
Senior & Shopmaker is pleased to present an exhibition of printed works by eleven notable women artists who have developed concepts in printmaking that have equal weight and validity with those previously perceived only in the artists’ primary medium.
Printmaking, like alchemy, can be described as an alternative chemistry. Transmuting base metals into gold is a good description of what goes on in a print shop, where zinc and copper plates are magically changed into matrices for prints. Like alchemy, the true goal of making prints is more significant than merely making gold, as fortuitous as that would be. The aim of the contemporary printmaker, like the medieval alchemist, is to use material transformations to extend the boundaries of her oeuvre and probe the nature of image making. If the artist plays the role of magician, the printmaking studio and master printers provide her with a laboratory and accessories for experimentation.
The majority of the eleven artists in the exhibition – all painters and sculptors - began their forays into printmaking only within the past decade. To date, some, including Tauba Auerbach, Sarah Morris, and Amy Sillman, have chosen to explore a sole medium in depth, ie., intaglio or screenprint; others, namely sculptors Polly Apfelbaum and Jessica Stockholder, depart from traditional techniques to incorporate a range of unorthodox materials and processes in their printed work. Elizabeth Peyton and Amy Sillman employ the liquid washes of soft-ground and spitbite aquatint to appoximate the painterly effects of their canvases, while Julie Mehretu, Amy Cutler, and Lisa Yuskavage use the same media to emphasize the primacy of drawing in their large-scale work. Printmaking provides a fertile crossroads where diversity of intent, means, and method have their coalescence.
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