“Abstract painting is like jazz… The melody is great, but what is the statement? Great tunes, but not connected to the real world where roses are red and the sky is blue, Tide is orange, and 7-Up is green.“ – James Rosenquist

STPI proudly presents American Modern masters Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg & James Rosenquist and their extraordinary ventures in printmaking. The 37 technical feats from the Singapore Art Museum Collection exploited the American print revival of the 50s–60s, revolutionizing how prints were perceived by amplifying the radical ideas and provocative visual language of The Readymades to ground-breaking effect.

From Rauschenberg’s layered photographic images, Johns’ figurative numbers, Rosenquist’s surreal cut-out compositions, and Lichtenstein’s dynamic comic strips, these avant-garde icons pushed the envelopes of both scale and techniques to demonstrate how printmaking collaborations were instrumental in this paradigm-shifting movement. They saw the appeal of print, with its handmade process, as an ideal form that enhanced their experimentation of the readymade image. “Printmaking is a collaboration not only with people, but with materials too… Collaboration not only takes the self-consciousness out of the artist, but the total result is generally so much greater, almost immeasurably.” – Robert Rauschenberg

Handmade Readymades examines the ways in which these artists redefined figurative art by exploring their original modes of representation, through the devices of collage, repetition, scale and abstraction. Adapting visual codes in media depictions and declaring everyday objects as motifs of modernity, they created new associations between displaced fragments of popular culture.

After a photographic spring, the summer will be dedicated to the contemporary print with a new edition of the Triennial of Contemporary Prints which will gather artists of the whole world. Widely present in collections, the engraving is a part of the DNA of MBAL. Resolutely turned to the diversity of the field of the contemporary printed art and the new territories of the creation, the museum is interested in this exhibition in the workshops of printing and publishing. Indeed, it is thanks to the know-how of these places and to their passion that number of artists has the opportunity to produce publishing and to experiment new techniques of impression, new supports, papers and ink.

On the occasion of the 9th edition of the Triennial of Contemporary Prints, MBAL has then invited printers and publishers to present a selection of works by artists who worked in close collaboration with them:

STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, established since 2002 in Singapore, is a unique place in Asia that allows artists to conduct rich experiments on printing and paper. Niels Borch Jensen, who founded Borch Editions in Copenhagen in 1979, is considered one of the world’s leading producers and publishers of graphic art and works with world-renowned artists. Finally, the Crown Point Press workshop, opened in San Francisco in 1962, offers artists the opportunity to engrave plates and use inks in exceptional conditions.

The Triennial is also an opportunity to commemorate Switzerland’s strong interest in print making. A room is devoted to the Swiss Engraving Society, which celebrates its centenary in 2018. MBAL has been a member since 1976 and has therefore acquired many works made by Swiss and international artists that were commissionned by this Society. The exhibition presents a selection of prints made in the 21st century. In addition, a space is dedicated to our collection which presents several masterpieces owned by MBAL and rarely displayed to the public.

Finally, wishing to display research around new graphic technologies, a double carte blanche is given to the Center for Future Publishing, founded in 2017 by designer Demian Conrad and hosted by the Geneva School of Art and Design, as well as to American artist Penelope Umbrico, who was invited by MBAL to experiment in this unique laboratory. To complete this rich survey dedicated to contemporary print making, the museum commissioned graphic designer Anette Lenz to make a limited edition print. The work – a silkscreen printed in 200 copies – will be available in our bookshop.

The exhibition received the support of the Loterie Romande, the city of Le Locle, the Société des beaux-arts et du musée du Locle, the Fondation Bonhôte pour l’art contemporain, the Fondation de Famille Sandoz, Swiss Life, the Fondation Erna et Curt Burgauer, Dr. Georg und Josi Guggenheim-Stiftung and the Fondation Art en jeu. An interview with the artist Penelope Umbrico appears in the series “Could you talk about…”.

Sun Xun’s first solo exhibition in Australia includes animated works, a 40-metre-long painting on bark paper, and a series of woodcuts.

Sun Xun (born 1980, Fuxin, China) is one of China’s most exciting young artists, best known for his animations made up of thousands of ink paintings, charcoal drawings and woodcuts. Containing very little dialogue, these hand-made films use combinations of image, sound and text to raise questions about what we perceive as truth and explore the slippery dynamics of memory, history, culture and politics.

Sun Xun’s works often highlight the absurd incongruities between authorised histories and personal recollections, and are particularly concerned with how history can be manipulated, interrogating the differences between official narratives presented by public agencies, politicians and the media — and more marginalised accounts that stem from ordinary people’s experiences.

This is Sun Xun’s first solo exhibition in Australia. The exhibition includes a number of Sun Xun’s most important animated works and encompasses both the MCA’s Level 1 North and South Galleries. The artist has created a major new work especially for the MCA exhibition, a 40-metre-long painting on bark paper and series of woodcuts, on display in the Level 1 North Gallery. The MCA also invited Sun Xun to do a residency project over one week at the start of the exhibition, where he created a 10-metre-long painting in view of the public in the Level 1 South Gallery.

The twentieth century was a significant time in the development of printmaking techniques and technologies, and the increase of women’s participation in the artistic practice. Culled predominantly from the Museum’s permanent collection, this exhibition will explore some of the most technically brilliant female printmakers and highlight their contributions to the field of printmaking.

In Odilon Redon. La littérature et la musique, the Kröller-Müller Museum sheds new light on the oeuvre of French artist Odilon Redon (Bordeaux 1840-Paris 1916). With a large number of paintings, pastels, drawings and lithographs, the exhibition shows the important role that literature and music play in Redon’s life and work.

The Künstlerhaus Munich Foundation is focusing on lithography and opens the entire house from 29th August to 02nd September 2018!

The Lithography Days 2018 gather artists, printers, professionals, enthusiasts and interested laymen from around the world. They should provide an exciting forum to illuminate current positions of lithography and to discover, test and experience their possibilities. The focus is on the exchange of knowledge and personal acquaintance. For this purpose, the covered courtyard remains open for social gatherings until 11.00 pm after the end of the opening hours. Drinks are sold in the courtyard, meals are available in the L'Osteria in the house.

The world of printmaking—a unique, rich method of artistic expression of transferring images with plates—while developing with unique characteristics by country or region, has evolved to incorporate reciprocal influences resulting in the diverse histories and techniques that exist in printmaking today.
Tama Art University has organized Tokyo International Mini-Print Triennial five times since 1995 with the aims of showing the world's latest contemporary prints and collecting scholarly data on materials, techniques, and expressions of printmaking. Taking advantage of an innate characteristic of printmaking, the project began from the idea that "any applicant can participate in this exhibition from anywhere in the world by sending a print by mail" with the size prescribed as within 29.7 cm x 21 cm. This event has come to draw great attention as an art university organized international open exhibition. For this sixth edition, we accepted digital expressions to encourage participation from the widest global range of artists as possible, and received 1,927 entries from 94 countries and districts. With the advancements in technical progress, the concept of printmaking has been greatly expanded. From the large number of submission, we have selected 324 works and 19 award-winning pieces from among them.

Pastels are only rarely exhibited due to the fragility of the powdery pigment and the light sensitivity of the paper on which it rests. Drawn primarily from the MFA’s holdings, with select loans from a private collection, “French Pastels: Treasures from the Vault” provides an exceptional opportunity to see firsthand nearly 40 seldom-shown masterworks by artists including Mary Cassatt, Edgar Degas, Edouard Manet, Jean-François Millet, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Odilon Redon, and Pierre-Auguste Renoir.

The medium of pastel is deceptive; the colorful sticks seem so simple to use, but the powdery surface can be difficult to layer and fix. Pastel is immediate and, potentially, ephemeral. During the late 19th century, avant-garde artists in France and beyond took up pastels to capture the here and now, fleeting facial expressions, passing effects of light or weather, delicate blossoms that might soon wither. Pastels were perfectly suited to this aim: an evanescent medium for an evanescent subject. “That’s the triumph of this technique,” noted a French critic at the time, “it must capture what is most elusive.”

Notable works in the exhibition include Camille Pissarro’s Poultry Market at Gisors (1885) and Jean-François Millet’s Dandelions (1867–68), in which the artist exploits the chalky medium to describe the downy texture of dandelions gone to seed. Another of pastel’s foremost innovators was Edgar Degas, whose processes and fixatives still elude explanation. In Dancers Resting (1881–85), pictured above, Degas employs the powdery medium to dazzling effect, conveying the gossamer quality of the ballerina’s puffy tutu. The exhibition also features a pastel box that once belonged to Mary Cassatt.

The Yoshida family has remarkably produced three generations of woodblock print artists in Japan, many of whom have been central to the major Japanese print movements of the 20th century. The patriarch of the family, Yoshida Hiroshi (1876–1950), was one of the most prolific artists in the history of woodblock printing and produced nostalgic landscape images coveted by collectors in Japan and abroad. After his death in 1950, the Yoshida family artists embarked on a new path, adding abstraction and a multiplicity of foreign influences to their art.

While Hiroshi’s oldest son, Toshi, worked closely under his father’s tutelage, he struggled to maintain his own identity as an artist. Later in his career, he began to make prints that were stylistically very different from those of his father, including line-based portraits of women. Hiroshi’s youngest son, Hodaka, whose work underwent several radical shifts during his career, led the family into a new world of abstract prints. Having been instilled with a love for travel by his father, Hodaka conveyed his reactions to different locales in his artwork. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, he created energetic works inspired by his trips to Mexico. Fujio, Hodaka and Toshi’s mother, began exploring sensual abstracted floral themes in prints at the age of 62, while Hodaka’s wife, Chizuko, though trained as an abstract painter, joined the family tradition after marrying and began making prints. Ayomi, the current generation’s Yoshida, is the most conceptual of the family’s artists; her prints serve as records of the true focus of her work—the carving process.

This exhibition presents works that were a gift from the family to the Art Institute in 2012 and commemorates the impressive career of Yoshida Chizuko, who passed away last year.

Nàdar / Prakriti is the first solo UK exhibition by Indian artist Ravi Agarwal, including new prints commissioned and published by Edinburgh Printmakers.

Ravi Agarwal has a diverse and interdisciplinary practice as an artist, environmental campaigner, writer and curator, and combines the ideas and approaches of science and culture in his projects. Agarwal undertook a research residency in the Scottish Highlands supported by the John Muir Trust to inform a print studio residency at Edinburgh Printmakers, where he developed new print commissions for this exhibition.

As part of his research, Agarwal considered the various pressures and challenges posed to nature in Scotland and India and community efforts for re-wilding, as well as the ongoing various multidisciplinary conversations to rethink urban sustainability as part of a larger ecospace.

Nàdar / Prakriti brings these aspects to the fore by interrogating ideas of nature and landscape.

This exhibition is supported by British Council and Creative Scotland with Partnership support from John Muir Trust and Creative Carbon Scotland.