Artifex Press | Chuck Close, David Grosz, Carina Evangelista | Chuck Close Catalogue Raisonné | Chuck Close: Painting, 1967-2012

FREE - South Court Auditorium doors open at 5:30 p.m.

Homepage for the Chuck Close catalogue raisonnéArtifex Press, the first company dedicated to the production of digital catalogues raisonnés, celebrates the release of Chuck Close: Painting, 1967-2012, a searchable, sortable interactive web publication detailing the artist’s iconic photo-based portraits. This event features a demonstration of the Artifex Press digital catalogue raisonné platform, followed by a discussion with Chuck Close; Carina Evangelista, editor of the Chuck Close Catalogue Raisonné; and David Grosz, Editor in Chief of Artifex Press.

This is the first in a series of events celebrating the launch of Artifex Press. On February 27, please join us for the release of Jim Dine: Sculpture, 1983-2013, also at The New York Public Library.

Artifex Press is the first company dedicated to the production of digital catalogues raisonnés. Artifex Press is currently working with 11 artists/estates, and its first four catalogues are for Chuck Close, Jim Dine, Sol Lewitt, and Agnes Martin. Artifex Press has also developed a proprietary, patent-pending software platform that can be used for further catalogues as well as inventory management.

Chuck Close (b. 1940, Monroe, Washington) is an artist best known for his large-scale, photo-based portrait paintings. His work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions in more than 20 countries, including major retrospective exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, and most recently at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. He has participated in nearly 1,000 group exhibitions. Close was presented with the prestigious National Medal of Arts by President Clinton in 2000. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Close has served on the board of many arts organizations and was recently appointed by President Obama to serve on The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. The artist, who painted President Clinton in 2006, also recently photographed President Obama. 

Page from the Chuck Close Catalogue RaisonnéDavid Grosz is Managing Partner/Editor in Chief of Artifex Press, a publisher of digital catalogues raisonnés and a developer of catalogue raisonné software (patent-pending). Artifex Press is currently working with 11 artists/estates, including Chuck Close, Jim Dine, Sol LeWitt, and Agnes Martin, and is also in discussions with several more. The Beta site, with the first catalogues, is expected to launch later this year. Grosz was previously Editor in Chief of Artinfo.com, a catalogue editor at the Guggenheim Museum, and Managing/Literary Editor at Grand Street. In 2011, he was a columnist for Sotheby's magazine, writing on art and technology, and from 2005 to 2007, he was an art critic for the New York Sun. His writing has also appeared in several other publications, including Slate, Modern Painters, the New Republic Online, Art News, the New Criterion, and the Forward. 

Carina Evangelista is the editor of the Chuck Close Catalogue Raisonné. Her research, curatorial, and publishing experience has straddled both the United States and the Philippines. From 1994 to 2000, she held positions in the education and curatorial departments at The Museum of Modern Art, where she worked on a number of exhibitions, including the traveling retrospective for Chuck Close, organized by Robert Storr in 1998. As curator at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts in 2008-09, she organized numerous group and solo exhibitions. An Asian Cultural Council fellowship in 2004 and 2005 deepened her involvement in the arts in the Philippines, where she has been a regular essayist on contemporary art. She is a contributing author to the forthcoming monograph on Filipino conceptual artist Roberto Chabet. 

The Artifex Press series events are organized in collaboration with Arezoo Moseni.