Contemporary Prints by Mark Dion, Olafur Eliasson, E.V. Day, and Others Displayed in Exhibition of Works in Portfolio

Prints by some of the most intriguing and compelling artists active today are showcased in a new exhibition at The New York Public Library that explores work created to be seen in the context of a portfolio. Prints that tell a story, investigate man’s relationship with nature, examine the politics of gender, and meditate on loss and mourning are just a sampling of the vibrant and inspired compositions represented.

Multiple Interpretations: Contemporary Prints in Portfolio at The New York Public Library is on view at The New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street from October 26, 2007 to January 27, 2008. Admission is free.

“The Library has acquired contemporary prints since the Print Collection was established in 1900,” says Roberta Waddell, Curator of the Print Collection. “We’re always eager to show recent work that is also new to the collection, and Multiple Interpretations offers an opportunity to acknowledge these acquisitions and celebrate the variety and vitality of printmaking today. The focus of this exhibition—how suites of prints serve the needs and intentions of contemporary artists—is of special interest in a collection that can trace the various roles that prints in series have played, virtually back to the invention of printmaking, a tradition richly represented in the Library’s collection in the work of Dürer, Callot, Goya, Hogarth, and countless others.”

Using printmaking’s penchant for serial imagery, the 23 artists in this exhibition create works of multiple images in order to convey narratives, comment on political and social concerns, consider formal issues, and explore the creative process. In all the projects shown here, individual prints are to be considered within the context of a series, rather than examined in isolation. For example, Ernesto Caivano mines the complexity of the relationship between nature and humans using elements from mythology and folklore, and adopting ideas from science, technology, and fiction. In Knight InterludeCaivano features a man in a suit of armor with a beak-like helmet. The knight gradually dissolves and is transformed into a tree, only to be resurrected in the twelfth and final plate as a glowing silhouette. The knight’s gradual union with nature is a somber and mysterious process, an allegory, perhaps, on death and rebirth, and a reminder that man and nature are interdependent, with man as the caretaker of his environment.

E.V. Day has fearlessly explored gender and sexuality in her previous projects and in the series entitled The Cellular Communion Series: Spitbite; Twin Towers—Double Fisted—2001; Mobile Mastury, Day associates masculinity with the “mastery of man over nature and the conquest of new frontiers through technology.” The etchings are modeled on blueprints, a reminder that architecture is a male-dominated profession. Technology, which she also considers a signifier of maleness, is represented by the cell phone, seen here as a tool to excite and satiate a man’s desire.

OlafurEliasson is intrigued by how we perceive the world and by the mechanisms employed to observe and interpret the physical universe. In Vibes, he celebrates the beauty inherent in wave patterns, diagrams, and graphs usually associated with scientific analyses to represent natural phenomena. The images, seemingly visualizations of the invisible, are austere yet elegant. In a number of the prints Eliasson takes advantage of the subtlety of continuous tone possible with photogravure (a photographic etching process) to simulate effects of glowing light.

Artists represented in this exhibition are Kevin Appel, David Avery, Christiane Baumgartner, SandowBirk, Chris Burden, Ernesto Caivano, E.V. Day, Mark Dion and Robert Williams, OlafurEliasson, Tony Fitzpatrick, Wayne Gonzales, Elliott Green, Daniel Heyman, Diane E. Jacobs, David Levinthal, Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese, Olaf Nicolai, Thomas Nozkowski, Andrew Raftery, JuliãoSarmento, David Shrigley, Juan Uslé, and John Wilson.

All prints in this exhibition were acquired in the last ten years by the Print Collection of The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs.

About the Print Collection

The most accessible print room in New York City, the Print Collection of The New York Public Library encompasses a specialized reference collection of over 15,000 volumes on the history of prints and printmakers; artist clipping files; and a collection of close to 200,000 original prints, ranging from woodcuts, engravings, etchings, lithographs, and screen prints to digital prints, covering the history of the art in the West from the 15th century to the present, and Japanese prints from the 10th century to the present. The collection, organized by a printmaker, includes illustrated books, artists’ books, and a small collection of drawings. Among the collection’s strengths are its holdings of 19th- and 20th-century American prints, with a particular focus on New York artists, and 18th- and 19th-century Japanese color woodcuts.

Of special note is the Avery Collection, comprising approximately 18,000 primarily 19th-century prints donated in 1900 by Samuel Putnam Avery; a significant survey of 18th- and 19th-century American and European political cartoons and caricatures; a rich collection of American historical prints, including The Phelps Stokes Collection and the Eno Collection of New York City views; as well as the continually growing holdings of contemporary prints.

About The New York Public Library

The New York Public Library was created in 1895 with the consolidation of the private libraries of John Jacob Astor and James Lenox with the Samuel Jones Tilden Trust. The Library provides free and open access to its physical and electronic collections and information, as well as to its services. It comprises four research centers – the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Science, Industry and Business Library – and 87 branch libraries in the Bronx, Manhattan, and Staten Island. Research and circulating collections combined total more than 50 million items. In addition, each year the Library presents thousands of exhibitions and public programs, which include classes in technology, literacy, and English as a second language. The New York Public Library serves over 21 million patrons who come through its doors annually and another 15 million users internationally, who access collections and services through its website, www.nypl.org.

This exhibition has been made possible by the continuing generosity of Miriam and Ira D. Wallach.

Multiple Interpretations: Contemporary Prints in Portfolio at The New York Public Library will be on view from October 26, 2007 through January 27, 2008 in the Print and Stokes Galleries at The New York Public Library’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library, located at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan. Exhibition hours are Monday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Tuesday and Wednesday, 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Thursday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 1 p.m. to 5 p.m.; closed holidays, and on November 5 and 11, and December 9 and 10, 2007. Admission is free. For more information, call 212-592-7730 or visit www.nypl.org.

###

Contact: Jennifer Lam 212.592.7708 | jennifer_lam@nypl.org

JL:09.14.07:nypl060