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Get ready for PHILAGRAFIKA 2010!
above: Óscar Muñoz, Narcisos en proceso (Narcissi in process), 1994-ongoing. Screen printed charcoal pigment on water in plexiglass vitrine with various pieces of printed paper laid beneath the water on the bottom of the vitrine 13.78” x 13.78” x 1.18”(35 x 35 x 3 cm)
PHILAGRAFIKA 2010
JANUARY 29 – APRIL 11, 2010
If you live in Philadelphia you can feel the silent brewing behind the scenes getting ready for the launch of Philagrafika 2010. This major festival celebrating the printed image in Philadelphia as its historical and contemporary epicenter marks a major international event with participating artists from all over the world. Philagrafika’s website states the following:
“The Philagrafika 2010 festival contends that the printed image lies at the heart of contemporary art. Concepts of imprinting, multiplicity, reproduction, and seriality, as well as physically printed forms are frequently used by artists who do not think of themselves as printmakers. As artistic vocabularies have expanded and mixing media has become commonplace, artists have increasingly drawn from inherent characteristics of the print to achieve specific aesthetic and expressive goals.
The core exhibition, The Graphic Unconscious explores the ubiquitous presence of printed matter in our visual culture and how concepts like accessibility, democratization, dissemination and transience inform diverse contemporary art practices while expanding the realm of printmaking itself. Exposing the print component in sculptural, environmental, performance, pictorial and video works, and highlighting their relevance to contemporary art, is the goal of The Graphic Unconscious.
Walter Benjamin proposed an interesting analogy in his essay, A Small History of Photography (1931): “It is through photography that we first discover the existence of th[e] optical unconscious, just as we discover the instinctual unconscious through psychoanalysis.” Let us ask a provocative question: Is there a print unconscious? If so, where does it lie? Just as printed materials have become so ubiquitous in our daily visual culture that they pass unnoticed, so too have print processes become an integral part of art-making without being acknowledged. Can the ethos of printmaking serve as a framework for understanding contemporary artistic production? Can a close reading of the realm of contemporary art from the perspective of print help illuminate, in some way, our understanding of the world?
Like photography, print is the manifestation of a physical object, but instead of being an emanation of the referent, an imprint gets its indexical quality by physical contiguity: the surface of the print matrix on which the image is made (e.g. woodblock, etching plate, etc.) is in direct contact with the paper (or other surface) onto which the image is printed. Leaving an imprint is the basis of printmaking―the print is the witness of the primeval urge to make one’s mark for posterity. But why leave an imprint? As its physical manifestation, the imprint is the body of the print; might the intention be its soul? Are these tangible and intangible qualities that print embodies what ought to be called the graphic unconscious? These are some of the questions that inspired The Graphic Unconscious exhibition.”
A few highlights of participating artists you don’t want to miss:
Christiane Baumgartner, Luftbild, 2009, Woodcut on Kozo paper
The Graphic Unconscious
Out of Print
Kiki Smith, The Temptation (2009), ink on Nepalese paper with palladium leaf and glitter
The Graphic Unconscious
You can also view their blog as things unfold behind the scenes (see recent pics of projects and collateral)
Guidebook and Map were project, managed by Caitlin Perkins and Rebecca Mott, Map by Dave Brett
For more information go to: www.philagrafika2010.org
Written by administrator on 01/15/2010 in Blog
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