Allentown museum celebrates Durham Press
Beatriz Milhazes, a woodblock and screenprint published by Durham Press. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO
The Allentown Art Museum is marking thirty years of innovative and experimental printmaking in a striking new special exhibition focused on works on paper created at nearby Durham Press.
“Color & Complexity: 30 Years at Durham Press” not only features outstanding prints but also reveals aspects of the fine-art printing process through the display of blocks and matrixes next to finished works.
The exhibition runs now through May 3.
Founded in 1988 by master printer Jean-Paul Russell and co-owned with partner and wife Ann Marshall, the Bucks County workshop and publisher is internationally recognized.
In collaborating with artists, Durham Press develops unique methods to suit each project, whether that involves creating hundreds of intricately carved and shaped woodblocks or marking a metal plate with a bulldozer.
Color & Complexity highlights an impressive body of work from across Durham Press’ history, including prints by some of today’s most groundbreaking artists, such as Hurvin Anderson, Polly Apfelbaum, Chitra Ganesh, John Giorno, Jacob Hashimoto, Michael Heizer, Emil Lukas, Beatriz Milhazes, and Mickalene Thomas.
Many of these artists have been returning to Durham Press for years and even decades, noting that the supportiveness and experimental nature of their experience often influences the development of their artwork in other media.
“From the beginning, Durham Press has expanded the notion of what a print can be,” writes Art Museum vice president of curatorial affairs Elaine Mehalakes Lucks. “Emerging in the context of the downtown New York art scene of the late 1980s, the Press is now famed for the variety, quality and complexity of their monoprints, portfolios and large-scale masterpieces of printmaking.
“Their publications are a reflection of the journey led by Marshall and Russell, and of the inventiveness of the adventurous artists with whom they have grown over the decades.”
A guided tour of the exhibition is offered free to visitors Feb. 9, 16 and 23; March 8; April 5, 19 and 26; and May 3.
Color & Complexity is supported through the generosity of the County of Lehigh, the Amaranth Foundation and Joan Miller Moran, Francie Bishop Good and David Horvitz, Society of the Arts, Nancy Light, William and Mary Ann Heydt, and Tony and Nancy Odorski.
For more information, visit AllentownArtMuseum.org.
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