Yossi Milo is pleased to announce Nebulous, Orit Hofshi’s debut solo exhibition with the gallery, and the artist’s first to be held in in New York in over two decades. Nebulous opens to the public on Thursday, March 14, and an artist’s reception will be held the following week on Thursday, March 21, from 6 – 8 PM. The show will coincide with the inclusion of Hofshi’s work in The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy, a group presentation at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. On March 23, 2024, Hofshi will participate in a conversation with Shelley Langdale, the National Gallery’s Curator and Head of Modern Prints and Drawings, which will draw connections between the artist’s practice and the historic 20th century works on view.

Orit Hofshi's large-scale works on paper relate natural phenomena with mass social and political events. Drawing from the artist’s experiences witnessing conflict in the Middle East and across the world; the lasting effects of the Holocaust; and crises across history, Hofshi cautiously populates her compositions with expressive subjects engrossed in mysterious yet urgent activity. Mired in uncertainty, they are caught between searching, finding, and intently looking on. She situates these figures in imagined landscapes that are seemingly forever devastated yet dotted with evidence of former human life.

Orit Hofshi creates her monumental works through a laborious combination of mediums, taking a purist, traditional approach to each. Hofshi’s works on paper are often immersive in size, verging on the scale of installation. In the studio, the artist begins by drawing directly onto pinewood panels, which she herself then carves with hand tools. Hofshi engages in a deeply physical dialogue with pinewood through this process, forming a collaboration with the natural qualities of her materials. The artist prints these woodcuts by hand, rubbing the back of large sheets of handmade paper with a wooden spoon, forgoing the use of presses or assistants. This solitary and labor-intensive process exists as a performative extension of the works themselves.

Hofshi’s methodologies encompass not only this distillation of traditional printing technique, but expansions on it. The artist shifts strategies of transferring ink from each woodblock, moving between printing, rubbing, and offsetting, often working in bold, saturated colors. Hofshi also adds drawn elements, incorporating layered movement and texture. These differing techniques play into a sense of alienation and displacement of the complex relationships within and between humankind and the natural world. Her frequent depiction of solitary figures draws on the artist’s philosophy that humanity must overcome adversity, and that growth only comes through reflecting upon one’s own held values, while facing the consequences of their decisions and actions as individuals and as part of society.

Hofshi has maintained a "library" of her carved wood blocks since early on in her career — one that she continually revisits in the creation of new work. The artist deploys recurring imagery of people, structures, and natural landscapes, reconfiguring them into an elliptical, nonlinear narrative in which the drama of the human condition plays out in the open. One particular recurring figure is a self-portrait of the artist, an avatar by which she locates herself within her work’s ongoing allegorical struggle. Hofshi’s own likeness makes clear that these reappearing forms are not just a pictorial strategy, but an existential situation. This replication of imagery throughout the artist’s oeuvre forms a dreamlike logic: a language of symbols that form cycles in an inescapable space, representative of a seemingly endless universal psychic state.

The exhibition shares a title with one of its central works: Nebulous, a monumental polyptych that realizes a life-sized moment of stillness from an epic narrative.

Early Bird Registration for MAPC 2024 is open until August 1, 2024. Find more details at the link below.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) is thrilled to announce the establishment of the Brand X Editions Archive with a gift from Robert Blanton and Brand X Editions, the globally recognized New York-based print studio and publisher founded by master printer Blanton. The gift currently includes more than 350 screenprints by Mickalene Thomas, Rashid Johnson, Joel Mesler, Adam Pendleton, Alex Katz, Chuck Close, Jenny Holzer, Emily Mae Smith, Tschabalala Self, and many others. The Archive will expand over the years to include new works produced by the studio.

To celebrate the gift, the PMA will host a Brand X Editions retrospective exhibition in 2025 and publish a richly illustrated catalogue providing a history of the studio and a broad overview of the Archive. The Archive and related documentation will be available for consultation in the PMA’s Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs and an associated database of the works will be accessible for online research and study.

“We are grateful to receive this gift from BXE and Robert Blanton,” said Sasha Suda, the George D. Widener Director and CEO of the PMA. “This gesture is both a coup and an honor for the PMA in light of Brand X Editions’ tremendous impact on contemporary screenprinting. We are proud to give these important works a permanent home.”

“Robert Blanton and his team of chromists and master printers at Brand X have been at the cutting edge of the screenprint medium for over four decades. They have pushed the traditional screenprint into areas of artistic expression that make it a vital medium for 21st Century artists” said Louis Marchesano, the Audrey and William H. Helfand Senior Curator of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs. “The addition of the Brand X Editions Archive to the collection of the PMA goes a long way toward building an authoritative resource on screenprinting and we’re more than delighted to provide a home where these works can be studied and exhibited for generations to come. Because Brand X has not only published prints, but also produced prints for other publishers, the texture and details of their technical and artistic accomplishments haven't been fully understood until now.”

The history of the PMA’s Department of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs is closely connected to the history of the screenprint (or silkscreen) medium and boasts one of the foremost collections of early screenprinting from the 1930s and ’40s. The first head of the department, Carl Zigrosser, who was hired in 1940, championed the medium and was closely associated with influential pioneers, including Guy Macoy who produced what are believed to be the first artistic screenprints in the history of art.

Says studio founder Robert Blanton, “Brand X has been very fortunate to work with many of the most talented and respected artists for nearly half a century. During that time, our team of unequalled printmakers has constantly sought to practice the traditional art of screenprinting at its highest level, while expanding the possibilities of what a screenprint can be. I am proud of the work we do, and with the establishment of the Brand X Editions Archive at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, we will be working with the PMA to help broaden the knowledge of this beautiful and nuanced medium.”

About the Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is a national and international destination for art, but first we are Philadelphia’s Museum of Art – for all the many diverse communities of the city. Through our collections, exhibitions, events, educational activities, celebrations and more, the PMA is a storyteller, and we welcome everyone to be part of the story -- our doors are wide open. To learn more, visit www.philamuseum.org.

For additional information, contact the Communications Department of the Philadelphia Museum of Art: pressroom@philamuseum.org.

The Anxious Eye: German Expressionism and Its Legacy presents insights into the work of these innovative, early 20th-century artists and their continuing impact a century later. The National Gallery of Art has important holdings of prints and drawings by German expressionists Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Emil Nolde, among others. The exhibition features recent acquisitions as well as works that have rarely, if ever, been on view, including gifts donated by celebrated Washington, DC, collectors Jacob and Ruth Cole Kainen. Among the early 20th-century artists represented in more than 100 prints, drawings, illustrated books, portfolios, and sculptures are Otto Dix, Käthe Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and lesser-known artists such as Walter Gramatté.

Through their bold, inventive art, the German expressionists sought to interpret the dramatic changes in the world around them during the tumultuous historical period 1900–1930, marked by world war and revolution. New scholarship following the recent World War I centenary adds depth to our understanding of these artists and their artistic heirs. Post-1950 and contemporary artists shown in the exhibition—Leonard Baskin, Nicole Eisenman, Orit Hofshi, Rashid Johnson, Matthias Mansen, and others—carry on the rich legacy of the German expressionists. These later artists invite us to compare the social, political, and cultural transformations taking place in our own societies today.

Rembrandt was one of the most creative printmakers of his day, at work in Amsterdam, a bustling city that had become the center of the European print trade.

This talk by Nadine Orenstein, Drue Heinz Curator in Charge of the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, will look at the wonderful world of printmaking in Holland in the seventeenth century where some prints could be rare works of art while many more were part of the everyday material culture.

Join us for a reception in the Milwaukee Art Museum's Schroeder Galleria following the lecture.

Lecture Sponsor:
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Print Forum

Reception Sponsor:
Milwaukee Art Museum’s Fine Arts Society

Print culture flourished in the North and South Netherlands during the 17th century as the region became the epicenter of printing and publishing in Europe. Artists such as Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Van de Velde, and Cornelis Visscher participated in the influx and exchange of ideas that the industry fostered and created prints in an expansive variety of genres, styles, and techniques. Drawn from the Museum’s collection, the works in this exhibition reflect popular subjects of the time, including scenes from the Bible and mythology, landscape, and portraiture. They also highlight the market forces and networks that allowed prints to play a prominent role in the art world.

Beinecke Library at Yale University is currently searching for four open curatorial positions, including in the field of European history and culture, pre-1800. Please consider applying or sharing this post with colleagues who may be interested.

This exhibition celebrates Kathryn A. and James E. Whistler’s outstanding collection of prints by the artist James McNeill Whistler. The Whistler collection includes over fifty etchings and ten lithographs, featuring superb impressions from the artist’s most famous series including the French Set and the First and Second Venice Sets. Bringing together these works at USD’s Hoehn Family Galleries, Glorious Harmony explores Whistler’s innovative approach to printmaking, revealing the artist’s profound impact on the history of the medium.

The notion that making and experiencing the arts can be healing has a long history. At the beginning of the 20th century, tuberculosis patients “taking the cure” at sanatoria often participated in structured arts and crafts programs. Wounded soldiers recuperating during World War II were taught “lap crafts,” such as beading and embroidery, as part of their medical therapy. The arts have served as powerful medicine for both mind and body for centuries.

When planning for this exhibition considering the connection between art and healing began, the Covid-19 pandemic was dominating headlines around the globe. How do the arts help us process and/or recover from medical illness? How can they help us navigate the complex experience of what it is to be a medical patient facing serious illness in the 21st century? And how can art help us heal from other kinds of social and emotional trauma?

Marion Mahony Griffin (1871–1961), one of the first female architects to practice in the United States, created drawings, prints, and other works featuring magnificent depictions of the natural world. For fourteen years she was Frank Lloyd Wright’s chief draftsperson and senior member of his studio, before she and her husband, Walter Burley Griffin, catapulted from Chicago to Australia after winning an international competition to design the new city of Canberra. This talk will trace the development of Marion’s artistic practice, from children’s book illustrations and architectural renderings to her “Forest Portraits”—an ambitious botanical series sparked by her fascination with the indigenous trees of Australia.

About the speaker
Debora Wood is a curator and writer specializing in modern and contemporary works on paper and is the current vice-president of the Print Council of America. This presentation stems from her ongoing research on the work of Marion Mahony Griffin, an interest that began with Wood’s seminal exhibition and catalog, Marion Mahony Griffin: Drawing the Form of Nature (Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, 2005). Wood’s recent publications include “Studies in Perception I (Alpha Serendipity)” in Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982 (LACMA 2023), “What is an Original Print? The Evolution of a Definition” in the scholarly, international journal Print Quarterly (September 2022), and entries for Renaissance Invention: Stradanus’s Nova Reperta (Newberry 2020) and Matisse: Paintings, Works on Paper, Sculptures, and Textiles at the Art Institute of Chicago (2019). Educated at Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, she has held positions at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University.