October 16-22, 2003

art

Creatures from Another Dimension

Joy Episalla, Cushion #4 (2001), C-print mounted to plexiglass (top); Red Grooms, Extra! Extra! Read All About It! (2003), three-dimensional lithograph (bottom).

Two shows make prints pop.

by Susan Hagen

Say the word "print" and most of us think of a flat, framed image or maybe, with a bit more reflection, a book or a newspaper. Now, in a double bill of two lively exhibitions organized by curator Jacqueline van Rhyn, The Print Center is trying to challenge those presumptions by showing us a wide range of works that extend the definition of prints to include three dimensions.

Beginning on the first floor with New York artist Red Grooms’ prints, the transition from flat to dimensional prints is clearly demonstrated. Grooms is known for his large-scale installations that combine flat painted and printed images with three-dimensional elements in a cartoon-like stage set. He loves boisterous scenes of city life, and the theme continues here in four conventional prints and four beautifully crafted 3-D relief prints. Times Square is a compressed box shape with a scooped-out center teeming with lithographic buildings, signs, buses, taxis and little people holding colorful umbrellas. Another 3-D piece, Hot Dog Vendor (lithography, linocut and chine collé), has a similar compression of space that expands outward in the foreground, giving the sense that you’re right on the street next to the action. The colorful characters of this urban world are doing their thing, just like in a Reginald Marsh painting. A dapper couple buys and eats hot dogs together, while a vendor slaps another dog on a bun. I especially like the bits of trash on the pavement and the wonderful fire hydrant that extends out of the diagonal pavement in the foreground, like a pop-up book illustration.

While the Grooms show is consistent and entertaining, the 35 prints in the two second-floor galleries represent the potential and risk in a wide variety of aesthetic and technical approaches. Some of the 23 artists seem to have struggled with the added complications of a 3-D object. For instance, the drama of North Jersey artist Bill Metcalf’s large columns, covered with intimate black-and-white photos, is impeded by a simple technical problem -- pink foam board peeking out between the photos. But most artists with work in the show seem to have hit on their own unique way of successfully meeting these new technical challenges. Sophie Calle, who lives and works in Paris, has ingeniously created a fantasy meal out of a real table called Chromatic Diet, based on her conceptual project involving food fetishes. Screen-printed on the white tablecloth is a faux meal of several monochromatic foods -- including white fish and rice, orange shrimp with sauce and green vegetables -- accompanied by a crisp set of napkins printed with a verbal description of the project. In Topology House, New York artist Jennifer Bolande has assembled 24 color photographs of different exterior windows (with a globe visible in each) on a faceted 3-D wood structure. Pittsburgh-based Daniel Sadler has made three little magical houses, called Shabitats, out of metal rods and glued-on color photos of floors, walls and signs on translucent vellum. A light inside makes them glow like night lights. Mark Franchino, who hails from Fargo, N.D., contributed On or Off, which consists of 19 black-and-white prints of faux light switches arranged tongue-in-cheek on either side of two real light switches.

Several artists, including Randy Bolton, effectively use or augment the technology of commercial printing. Bolton, a former Philadelphian who now resides in Detroit, collages illustrations from children’s books together in high-tech digital prints on Lexan mounted on wood. The eight pieces in the show all consist of witty pairs of related images joined with a piece of braided gimp. Like a Freudian slip, in Dog Tongue, a cutout dog’s head is paired with a scene in the same shape of two girls pointing at something (a dropped jacket?) in the exact shape and color of the dog’s tongue. With a similar sense of irony, Jenny Holzer’s appealing Modern Old Fashion Glasses are screen-printed with her trademark double-edged aphorisms. One reads, "Protect me from what I want," and another, "The most profound things are inexpressible." Philadelphia artist Nick Cassway, in his Anthrax Victims Series, uses nearly invisible acrylic screen-printing on glass to create a sad tribute consisting of soft shadows on the wall. Massachusetts-based Peggy Diggs prints decorative text and images on commercial gift-wrap, toying with painful emotions and negating the idea of the gift. One, printed on an opulent bed of roses, reads, "You will never have me"; another, printed on a subtle white pattern, overlays images of hangers and sperm with the words: "We have a problem here."

It’s clearly imprecise to call the 3-D prints in these two shows fun (though without a doubt some of them are!), but they can all be appreciated for their ambition to step outside the box, meet the increased challenges of this hybrid art form and stretch our preconceptions a bit.

SCULPTURAL PRINTS

EXTRA! EXTRA! 2D AND 3D GRAPHIC WORK BY RED GROOMS

Through Nov. 1, The Print Center, 1614 Latimer St., 215-735-6090

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