New Voices: Ritual by Print Center New York

Ritual New Voices

New Voices

Ritual

Foreword

Judy Hecker, Executive Director

Jenn Bratovich, Director of

Exhibitions and Programs

17 Ritual

Olivia Shao

37 Reading List

51 Works in the Exhibition

Castillo Wallpaper Proposal (Rhododendron), 2022

Ruben

Ruben Castillo Love Notes (Research Proposal), 2022

Ruben Castillo Flow With It, 2021

Foreword

Print Center New York is pleased to present New Voices: Ritual in the Jordan Schnitzer Gallery. For this second year of our New Voices open call program, our invited curator Olivia Shao was interested in how ritual is revealed and enacted through everyday objects and experiences; how it intersects with artmaking; and how it helps us make sense of the world. By its nature, printmaking is teeming with ritual objects and actions, which artists leverage to examine and reflect upon the world around them. Understanding this, as Shao moved through her selection process (working from a pool of nearly 500 applications from artists residing in 42 states), she approached the task with a particular interest in nontraditional approaches to print.

The six artists selected for the 2024 cohort— Ruben Castillo, Andrew Gonzalez, Elnaz Javani, Naomi Nakazato, Jonathan Sánchez Noa, and Kate VanVliet—

exemplify this spirit. None identifies chiefly or solely as a printmaker; these artists work in fiber, papermaking, installation, and sculpture, and approach print as a set of tools for processing materials and experiences. They explore issues of production and circulation; exploit opportunities in layering and mis-registration; and invest in print’s at-times laborious processes to memorialize people, places, and things. Organizing an exhibition from an open call can be tricky business, but Shao, with the help of Exhibitions and Programs Coordinator Robin Siddall, has assembled a show that brings freshness to an idea of increasing relevance in the contemporary art world.

New Voices is not only an exhibition, but also a development program that puts artists in community and conversation with each other and with other thinkers and makers. As we work with the cohort this summer, we’re also guided by the lines of inquiry that helped shape Shao’s curatorial framework. We’re thinking about our daily habits and gestures, how revision and iteration shape our creative work, the politics and poetics of archiving, and the individual and cultural memories of materials. Through private sessions led by Sheetal Prajapati of Lohar Projects and public talks and workshops organized by the artists, this season brings the cohort into contact with a range of voices shaping the contemporary practice.

We are grateful to all of our supporters for making this presentation of New Voices possible. Print Center New York is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and New York State

Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature. We are also grateful to The Wolf Kahn Foundation and The Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Mason Foundation for establishing the Emily Mason—Wolf Kahn Artist Development Fund.

Print Center New York gratefully acknowledges the leadership support of our Board of Trustees, the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation for the Jordan Schnitzer Gallery, and the Garfield Family Foundation for the Leslie and Johanna Garfield Lobby. Finally, we extend our gratitude to all of Print Center New York’s talented staff, whose dedication and hard work make it possible for us to support the emerging artists who are expanding and challenging our field.

Judy Hecker Executive Director

Jenn Bratovich Director of Exhibitions and Programs

Andrew Gonzalez Green Apple Androo Notes, 2019

Gonzalez Orange Star Notes, 2020

Andrew

Andrew Gonzalez

Blue and Green Bell Notes, 2023

Ritual

Rituals are a fundamental part of everyday life: from quotidian acts we may carry out in the same way each day, to more formal gestures tied to ceremony or observance, rituals connect us to our culture and serve as markers of time that can bridge the past and the present. Through these forms and conventions, rituals can become embedded in objects, circulating among us in the techniques that repeat us to ourselves. It follows, then, that the making of art can also enact and embody ritual: forms emerge and develop through concerted repetition, process becomes a personal rubric within an individual’s practice, and materials are transformed. The six artists in New Voices: Ritual consider their own individual histories, cultural references, and positions within the history of printmaking to explore the intersections of ritual, artmaking, and ways of life.

Olivia Shao

For several years, Andrew Gonzalez has explored the complexities of currency, value, and exchange. These interests can be attributed to the artist’s earliest childhood experiences with poverty and the use of paper food stamps as an alternate currency. He speaks of the food stamps’ board game quality, with their single-sided printing, simple designs, and use within a specific economic structure. The works included in this exhibition are individually drawn paper notes, made using the techniques of frottage, stamping, drawing, and tracing—laborious attempts to “print” a currency that does not circulate. In a time when monetary transactions are going paperless and seem ever more immaterial, the work questions ways in which objects come to embody concepts of value, which can be economic, cultural, or spiritual. For example, in the West, old coins and vintage money often become expensive collectibles, whereas in Asian societies, the primary role of joss paper money is to be used in funerary offerings.

Gonzalez’s renderings of paper money foreground inherent contradictions of interchangeability and singularity, oscillating between the uniqueness of each note and its relation to its mass uniformity. In Gilbert Stuart Notes (2023), Blue and Green Bell Notes (2023), and Orange Star Notes (2020), shells, jigsaw puzzle pieces, stars, and liberty bells serve as recurring symbols. The traced shell icons recall forms of currency that predate printed notes; the combinations of stars and liberty bells are derived from old food stamp booklet covers. Some of these elements are applied using frottage—the process of taking a rubbing from an object’s textured surface to transfer an image—while others are stamped

onto each bill, making every individual note unique. The layout and design of the notes also reflect the artist’s interest in the aesthetics of security printing used in forms of identification and verification, such as checks, money, stamps, certificates, and documents. In Blue and Green Bell Notes, Gonzalez self-authenticates these notes using the Spirograph drawing toy, a tool derived from the machine lathe, with origins in banknote design and anti-counterfeiting measures. The metaphor of money as implicit value extends to the notes’ status as artworks as well, through their lack of circulation and limited nature. As such, they function in a uniquely selfarticulated hybrid space between a collectible and a ritual cultural object. Gonzalez plays cleverly with such ideas, redefining and substituting real world experiences and conditions with imaginative ones.

Kate VanVliet’s practice of collecting found objects and materials over the course of many years serves as the foundation for her sculpture and printmaking practice. These items come from walks through her neighborhood, estate sales, construction debris, and her own studio scraps. In the everyday routine of collecting, working, scrapping, and repurposing, VanVliet contemplates a non-linear time where universal symbols, along with personally and culturally significant objects, are metaphors for events and memories.

Forager III (2024) is a new arrangement of collected items the artist has brought together for this exhibition. This vitrine of cast-off objects offers a glimpse into VanVliet’s formal vocabulary, linking her intaglio and sculptural processes. In both mediums, she often builds up “layers” that slowly coalesce over time. For VanVliet,

Olivia Shao

foraging is a lifelong practice of collecting treasures throughout the day, embracing inherent chance and surprise, while maintaining some internal criteria for what gets picked up—knowing what the object in question might get used for, or how it relates to the lived experience that guides her narrative practice.

The prints in this exhibition, from the series Heirloom Machine (2023), consider how these seemingly insignificant things are transformed into objects of importance. Sometimes, the worth of an item is apparent on its surface, having been made with fine or precious materials. Other times—as in the case of heirlooms— materials, whether mundane or prized, are imbued with importance through their use or association with an experience precious to their owners. In Heirloom Machine, objects VanVliet has salvaged such as eggshells, produce netting, tangles of hair, wilting plants, stained tea bags, old spoons, copper wire, and offcuts of prints are carefully rendered in softground and aquatint. Each print contains memories and gestures that are representative of deeper meaning within the artist’s personal lexicon; they are mediators of her interactions with the world. In both Linger (2023) and (Love’s) Ring of Fire (2023), an ovoid form is repeated. This symbol has a longstanding personal, cultural, and art historical significance, representative of the beginning, of creation and rebirth. For VanVliet, the practice of indexing her foraged materials through both print and sculpture becomes a ritual of its own, and through this process, detritus becomes talisman.

Daily events, as well as personal and domestic artifacts, shape Ruben Castillo’s varied practice, which

explores gay histories and narratives through printmaking, drawing, and sculpture. The artist is influenced by Kathleen Stewart’s book Ordinary Affects, in which she describes the still life as having vibratory potential and the ability to “distill spirits into potency through a process of slow condensation.” Taking inspiration from this, Castillo’s work mines everyday domestic experiences that, when paused, become meditative still lifes and moments of transition. For Castillo, these are “charged events, presenting affective traces and potentials for transformation. Considering those who live in precarious circumstances, these processes around cultivating still scenes are not just passive acts but rather—I believe—transformative ones.”

Castillo’s wall-spanning installation—consisting of etching, woodcut, lithography, collage, and digital prints—is inspired by scrapbooking. This medium for saving and repurposing personal mementos is fitting, as many of the prints were taken from the artist’s earlier work Greatest Hits: Vol. 1 & 2 (2022). The project drew from his research on Phylis Shafer’s two-volume scrapbook Spirit of Hope, housed at the Gay and Lesbian Archives of Mid-America (Kansas City, MO). Shafer, the mother of gay rights activist Drew Shafer, collected clippings, flyers, magazine articles, and other ephemera centered on the gay and lesbian community in Kansas City from the mid-1960s to mid-1980s, meticulously pasting these materials onto papers from an old wallpaper sample book and annotating the margins with handwritten notes. Castillo integrates the aesthetics of Shafer’s scrapbook into his installation, exploring modes of matriarchal labor, liberatory practice, and

Olivia Shao

storytelling aimed toward a queer futurity. The artist also digitally reassembles floral wallpaper patterns inspired by Spirit of Hope, juxtaposing them with prints that draw on experiences of intimacy, relationships, and domestic space. Here, Castillo uses printmaking as a medium to highlight marginalized narratives and gestures, bringing attention to overlooked communities and individuals. Ritual is explored through quotidian, everyday experiences: a hand on a pillow, daydream clouds, crumpled wrappers, or news clippings are overlaid with cut flowers that appear as both commemorative gifts and signs of vitality.

Elnaz Javani utilizes textile and fiber processes (handdyeing, appliqué, and hand-stitching) alongside print processes—such as screen printing and heat transfers— as a method of storytelling. Her multi-layered surfaces reference complexities of gender, queer culture, and a diasporic Iranian identity, while touching upon what it means to be in asylum, unable to return to one’s homeland. Fabric shares a structural resemblance to the body. It can be molded, torn, transformed, shaped, and sewn, and it can act like a second skin. Thread becomes a form of drawing and fastening, functioning both pictorially and structurally. Works like Piscina and Two Piece in Sequel (both 2023) investigate how the body is affected by its surroundings, and how identities are constantly reimagined. There is a groundless, abstract space in these panels that evokes what writer Sarah Ahmed, in Queer Phenomenology, has described as a “failed orientation,” a sense of disorientation in relation to the body in time and space that can nonetheless become generative and create a sense of belonging.

Javani’s experimentation with fabric illustrates how images can be used as strategies for survival and resistance, challenging existing norms that simplify and flatten individual experience. By employing hand dyeing techniques to create a palette, along with silkscreening processes and sublimation printing to create serial images, the artist creates washes of color and forms that oscillate between positive and negative space. Her surfaces allude both to states of loss and confusion, as well as to one’s complex history and layered identity, serving as visual metaphors for the intricacies of her experiences. The repetition and intense labor involved to create these works, meanwhile, mirrors how attention and ritual can be transformative storytelling tools, offering a form of meditation and a means of understanding and situating oneself in the world.

For Naomi Nakazato, printmaking serves as an entry into realms of language, remembrance, and worship. In her sculptural practice Nakazato creates shrines of invented religious objects that incorporate frottage, screen-printing, and photo transfer. While sculpture generates a sense of place, the transfer process implicit in printmaking serves as a means of destabilization, codeswitching, or putting one place in dialogue with another. To achieve this, the artist plays with mis-registration in her screen printing and printmaking processes, creating ambiguities and generating a sense of photographic memory and forgetting.

Based on imagery from Nakazato’s own archive, Google street views, and maps, the works triangulate a complex sense of presence and absence, generating a both grounding and expansive sense of space. The grey

Olivia Shao

area of the landscapes and ceremonial sites in her work symbolically articulate an in-betweenness that is never fully one or the other, a mode of existing between cultures, specifically, those of Japan and the United States. In SP2021_1 and SP2021_2 (both 2021), medicated pain patches from the Japanese brand Salonpas are used as surfaces on which digital landscapes are laser printed, creating voids and divots within the ridges of the material. The medicated patches have a specific medicinal smell, eliciting a sense-memory connected to Nakazato’s family history and Japanese culture. Combined, these topographic and sensory fragments allude to the impulse to map and explore one’s past, to make sense of it from the vantage of the present-day. Integrating printmaking and papermaking with natural fibers, Jonathan Sánchez Noa explores the porous relationships between colonial histories, religious inheritances in cultural diaspora, and personal ritual. His work is influenced by the Palo Monte religion and an interest in creolization as a form of creating work. Sánchez Noa ladens his sculptures and prints with culturally significant materials such as abacá, cacao, and tobacco. The latter, a material that holds significant power in Afro-Cuban prayer and spiritual traditions, is also a reference to the artist’s great-grandfather’s experience working on a tobacco plantation in Cuba. Sánchez Noa uses tobacco as a substitute for ink, imprinting stain patterns directly into wet paper pulp slabs. In Ácana, Untitled (Ramifianas, soy Rio soy), and Untitled (power objects pa’ Manuel) (all 2021), the lines between papermaking and printmaking blur, as the artist approaches

mark-making by engraving into the paper directly with etching tools, imbuing the work with spirit and energy.

In OBA IGBO (abridor-de-caminos) (2024), Sánchez Noa incorporates architecture, printmaking, and papermaking into a sculptural form that can be viewed as an altar and sacred space. In the process of forming handmade paper sheets, the artist adapts silkscreen techniques to apply pigmented paper pulp—naturally dyed with cochineal, madder, and logwood—before the sheets are pressed and dried. Tobacco leaves are collaged onto the sheets, integrating daily religious practices with personal belief systems, folkloric stories, and poetry which connects ancestral voices. These works embody powerful objects that are conduits channeling energy and rendering palpable the many layers of history.

Temptation, 2022

Elnaz Javani

Elnaz Javani Piscina, 2023

Elnaz Javani

Two Piece in Sequel, 2023

SP2021_1, 2021

Naomi Nakazato

Flowers for the Mantel, Our Seepy Hem, 2022

Other Shore (abalone cups 4 u), 2023

Naomi Nakazato

Reading List

Artists in the New Voices 2024 cohort were asked to share their “personal syllabus,” a list of references that influence their practices and lives. The resulting list spans fiction, essays, artists, authors, music, podcasts, video games, and more. References are listed alphabetically by type.

Reading

Ahmed, Sara. The Promise of Happiness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010.

Alphen, Ernst van, ed. Productive Archiving: Artistic Strategies, Future Memories, and Fluid Identities. Amsterdam: Valiz, 2023.

Barthes, Roland. “Plastic.” Essay. In Mythologies: Selected and Translated from the French, translated by Annette Lavers. New York: Hill & Wang, 1972.

Berlant, Lauren Gail. Cruel Optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.

Bogost, Ian. How to Talk about Videogames. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.

Brown, Palmer. Beyond the Pawpaw Trees. New York: New York Review, 2012.

Camnitzer, Luis. Conceptualism in Latin American Art: Didactics of Liberation. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2007.

Dittel, Kris, and Clementine Edwards, eds. The Material Kinship Reader: Material beyond Extraction and Kinship beyond the Nuclear Family. Eindhoven: Onomatopee, 2022.

Ende, Michael. The Neverending Story. Translated by Ralph Manheim. New York: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1983.

Guillen, Nicolas. Songoro Cosongo. Buenos Aires: Losada, 1952.

Hesse, Hermann. Steppenwolf. Translated by Basil Creighton. London: Martin Secker, 1929.

Ishiguro, Kazuo. “Banquet Speech.” Nobel Prize for Literature, December 10, 2017.

———. Never Let Me Go. New York: Random House, 2005.

James, Henry. The Aspern Papers. New York: Macmillan & Company, 1888.

Koren, Leonard, and Nathalie Du Pasquier. Arranging Things: A Rhetoric of Object Placement. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2003.

Lawrence, Max, Jesse Goldstein, and Mary Chen, eds. Space 1026: Pulling Teeth. Philadelphia: Tonearm Productions, 2006.

Le Guin, Ursula K. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.” Essay. In Women of Vision, edited by Denise Du, 1–12. London: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.

Love, Heather. Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009.

Lowry, Clynton. Art Handler Magazine, 2014.

Mauss, Marcel, W.D Halls, and Mary Douglas. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: Norton, 2000.

McGough, Peter. I’ve Seen the Future and I’m Not Going: The Art Scene and Downtown New York in the 1980s. New York: Pantheon Books, 2019.

Müller, Lothar. White Magic: The Age of Paper. Translated by Jessica Spengler. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2015.

Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2019.

Newall, Venetia. An Egg at Easter: A Folklore Study. London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1984.

O’Toole, Fintan. We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2022.

Perec, Georges. Species of Space and Other Pieces. Edited by John Sturrock. London: Penguin, 2008.

Prasad, Eswar S. The Future of Money: How the Digital Revolution is Transforming Currencies and Finance. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2021.

Reed, Patricia. “Orientation in a Big World: On the Necessity of Horizonless Perspectives.” e-flux Journal #101, June 2019.

Russell, Legacy. Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. London: Verso, 2020.

Saffren, Harry William. Philadelphia: Old City Arts. Columbia, PA: Mullen Books, 1978.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.

Solnit, Rebecca. A Field Guide to Getting Lost. New York: Penguin Random House, 2005.

Stewart, Susan. On Longing. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012.

Steyerl, Hito. The Wretched of the Screen. London: Sternberg Press, 2013.

Torres, Justin. Blackouts: a novel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2023.

Weintraub, Linda. “Emotion-Rage against the Female Gullibility: Pipilotti Rist.” Essay. In In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art, 134–41. New York: D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers, 2003.

———. “Updating Humanity’s Collective Dread: China Adams.” Essay. In In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art, 332–41. New York: D.A.P./ Distributed Art Publishers, 2003.

Wu, Katherine J. “The Most Mysterious Cells in Our Bodies Don’t Belong to Us.” The Atlantic, January 3, 2024.

Yoder, Rachel. Nightbitch. New York: Random House US, 2022.

Listening

Abumrad, Jad. RadioLab. Podcast, WNYC Studios, 2002.

Floating Points. Promises. Pharaoh Sanders. The London Symphony Orchestra. Album, Sergeant Recorders, 2021.

Malone, Kali. The Sacrificial Code. Album, iDEAL Recordings, 2019.

McKinney, Kelsey and Alex Sujong Laughlin. Normal Gossip. Podcast, Defector Media, 2022.

Metcalf, Miranda K., Reinaldo Gil Zambrano, Timothy A. Pauszek, and Elizabeth K. MacMillan. Hello, Print Friend. Podcast, 2018.

Snyder, Mark and Kenny Finkle. All I want to do is talk about Madonna. Podcast, 2019.

Spiegel, Alix, Lulu Miller, and Hanna Rosin. Invisibilia. Podcast, NPR, 2015–2023.

Todd, Bridget. “How to Deal with Grief: Interview with Molly Guy.” Stuff Mom Never Told You, April 4, 2018.

Ward, Alie. Ologies. Podcast, 2017.

Watching

McQuater, Cassie. Black Room. Browser based video game, 2017.

Lantz, Frank. “Doorknobs and Butterflies: Games

After Art.” Art History of Games Symposium. Lecture presented at the High Museum of Art by Georgia Tech and the Savannah College of Art and Design, February 5, 2010.

Van Someren, Kim. Printmaking in the Apocalypse. YouTube series, @kimvansomeren8144, 2020.

Influential People

Sara Ahmed

John Berger

Lauren Berlant

Louise Bourgeois

adrienne maree brown

Luis Camnitzer

Mary Cassatt

Caspar David Friedrich

Tim Hawkinson

bell hooks

Käthe Kollwitz

Julia Kristeva

Heather Love

Gerardo Mosquera

Andrew Raftery

Kiki Smith

Hito Steyerl

Ocean Vuong

Jonathan Sánchez Noa

Untitled (cabeza N’ko), 2022

Jonathan Sánchez Noa

Untitled (Ramfianas, soy Río soy), 2021

Jonathan Sánchez Noa

Untitled (power objects pa’ Manuel), 2021

Kate VanVliet (Love’s) Ring of Fire, 2023

La Mer, 2023

Kate VanVliet

Works in the Exhibition

Ruben Castillo

Now We’re Beginning to Get

Somewhere, 2024

Site-specific installation includes:

Flow With It, 2021

Lithograph with etching

22 × 16 inches

Gay Talk (Invert, In The Flowers), 2023

Assembly of lithographs

20 × 24 inches

He Loved His Garden, 2023

Installation of woodcuts each 17¾ × 11¾ inches

Isn’t This Fabulous, 2023

Monoprint with etching and lithograph collage

14 × 18 inches

Love Notes (Research Proposal), 2022

Etching

Artist’s proof from an edition of 5 7¾ × 5¾ inches (sheet: 16 × 12 inches)

This Has Been a Dream, 2023

Laser-engraved intaglio with surface roll

9¾ × 7 inches (sheet: 18 × 14 inches)

Through & Through, 2021

Lithograph with etching

22 × 16 inches

Wallpaper Proposal (Rhododendron), 2022

Etching

Artist’s proof from an edition of 5 6¾ × 5 inches (sheet: 14¾ × 12 inches)

What We’ve Been Hoping For, 2023

Etching, engraving, surface roll, collage, gold leaf

25 × 32 inches

Andrew Gonzalez

Blue and Green Bell Notes, 2023

Transaction register pages, graphite frottage, rubber stamp, pen (Spirograph), postage stamps 24 individual notes and 6 uncut sheets of 2 notes each note 3 × 5¾ inches (uncut sheet: 6 × 5¾ inches)

Crazy Food Notes, 2020

Letterpress, pencil (Spirogragh), colored pencil, pen, rubber stamp, wire hanger

Uncut sheet of 8 notes from a set of 6 sheets

19¾ × 10¾ inches

Gilbert Stuart Notes, 2023

Pencil (Spirograph), wine, tea, colored pencil, gouache paint, metal stamp, rubber stamp, acrylic paint, pen, copper leaf, paper punch

16 individual notes each note 2¾ × 6 inches

Green Apple Androo Notes, 2019

Rubber stamp, colored pencil, pen, marker, graphite frottage on paper, wire hanger

Uncut sheet of 72 notes

44½ × 36 inches

Orange Star Notes, 2020

Gouache paint, rubber stamp, colored pencil, pen (Spirograph), hanger

Uncut sheet of 98 notes

48½ × 42 inches

Red Star Notes, 2020

Watercolor paint, rubber stamp, colored pencil, graphite frottage, hanger

Uncut sheet of 21 notes

26½ × 21 inches

Elnaz Javani

Distant closeness, 2023

Hand stitched embroidery, hand dyeing, appliquéd cotton, sublimation printing, discharge printing

56 × 46 inches

Piscina, 2023

Hand stitched embroidery, hand dyeing, appliquéd cotton, sublimation printing, discharge printing

45 × 42 inches

Temptation, 2022

Hand stitched embroidery, hand dyeing, appliquéd cotton, sublimation printing

64 × 56 inches

Two Piece in Sequel, 2023

Hand stitched embroidery, hand dyeing, appliquéd cotton, sublimation printing

44 × 53 inches

Naomi Nakazato

Flowers for the Mantel, Our Seepy Hem, 2022

Urethane, screen print on plexiglass, laser print transfer on thermoplastic

41½ × 24 × 11¾ inches

Nothing to Write Any Home About, 2021

Plexiglass, thermoplastic, laser print on vellum, wood, salt, found objects

Dimensions variable

Other Shore (abalone cups 4 u), 2023

Screenprint on aluminum leaf, polyurethane, hydrocal, acrylic on panel

47 × 31½ × 1¾ inches

SP2021_1, 2021

Laser print on Salonpas medicated patches on copy paper

8½ × 11 inches

SP2021_2, 2021

Laser print on Salonpas medicated patches on copy paper

8½ × 11 inches

Courtesy the artist and Olympia Art, New York

Jonathan Sánchez Noa

Ácana, 2021

Cuban tobacco on handmade paper dyed with graphite

24 × 18 inches

OBA IGBO (abridor-de-caminos), 2024

Virginia Flue Cured tobacco on handmade paper dyed with cochineal, madder, and logwood, pulp silkscreen; cast handmade paper

64 × 96 × 20 inches

Untitled (cabeza N’ko), 2022

Connecticut broadleaf tobacco, coir, abacá, sealing wax on concrete

8 × 22 × 9 inches

Untitled (power objects pa’ Manuel), 2021

Cuban tobacco on handmade paper dyed with graphite

24 × 18 inches

Untitled (Ramfianas soy Río soy), 2021

Cuban tobacco on handmade paper dyed with graphite

24 × 18 inches

Kate VanVliet

(Love’s) Ring of Fire, 2023

Intaglio with soft ground, aquatint, and drypoint

Edition of 6

7¾ × 9 inches (sheet: 12 × 15 inches)

Forager III, 2024

Cut prints, maquettes, single day

sculptures, found objects, mounted on birch

70 × 34 × 8 inches

La Mer, 2023

Intaglio with soft ground, aquatint, and drypoint

Variable edition of 8

9 × 8 inches (sheet: 15 × 12 inches)

Linger, 2023

Intaglio with soft ground and aquatint

Edition of 8

8 × 9 inches (sheet: 13 × 13 inches)

This Must Be the Place, 2023

Intaglio with soft ground, aquatint, and chine collé

Variable edition of 7

8 × 9 inches (sheet: 13 × 13 inches)

Courtesy the artist and Paradigm Gallery + Studio, Philadelphia

Detail of Forager III, 2024

Kate VanVliet

Olivia Shao is the Burger Collection & TOY Meets Art Curator at The Drawing Center in New York. She has also organized exhibitions and projects at independent spaces, galleries, and institutions in New York, Los Angeles, Europe, and Asia.

Curator Artists

Ruben Castillo (b. 1990) is a visual artist and educator investigating themes of intimacy, queerness, archival history, and the body using a range of media including print, drawing, sculpture, installation, and video. His most recent imagery draws from photographs and documents, seeing the ordinary as a site for transformative potential and feeling. In 2023 he received the Charlotte Street Foundation Visual Art Award and was a finalist for the 21C Kansas City Artadia Award. Castillo was born in Dallas, TX, and received his MFA in Visual Art from the University of Kansas and a BFA in Printmaking from the Kansas City Art Institute. He has taught printmaking and drawing at the Kansas City Art Institute and Johnson County Community College and is currently an Assistant Professor of Printmaking in the Department of Art at Skidmore College.

Andrew Gonzalez (b. 1984) is an art school graduate, who was born in Providence, RI. He is a numismatist. Gonzalez lives and works in New York.

Elnaz Javani is an artist and educator currently residing in Colorado. She is an Assistant Professor at Colorado State University. She holds an MFA in Fiber & Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she was the recipient of the New Artist Society Merit Scholarship, and holds a BFA from Tehran University of Art. Javani is a 2023 Center for Craft Artist Grant recipient and was awarded Faculty Enrichment Grants from SAIC for 2021–2022. She was named one of Chicago’s Break Out Artists in 2022. Additionally, she received a Spark Grant from the Chicago Artist Coalition in 2021, the Kala Art Institute Fellowship Award in 2020, and the Define American Art Fellowship Grant in 2020. Her work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally. Javani’s work is in the permanent collection of the DePaul Art Museum.

Naomi Nakazato (b. 1992) is a Japanese-American multidisciplinary artist whose materials-based practice surveys the conglomerate landscape of memory, language, and the artificial authenticity of the biracial experience. Her work utilizes semiotics and syntactic intervention of natural objects to examine the weight of authenticity and articulate belonging. Nakazato holds a BA in Painting and Drawing from the South Carolina School of the Arts and an MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art. Her recent work and installations have been exhibited at Olympia and Below Grand (New York), NARS Foundation (Brooklyn), Galerie Tracanelli (Grenoble, France), and PADA (Barreiro, Portugal). She is the recipient of grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, FST Studio Projects Funds, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation. Nakazato lives and works in Brooklyn.

Jonathan Sánchez Noa (b. 1994) is a multidisciplinary artist born in Havana, Cuba. He creates artworks that examine how histories of colonial extractivism have impacted notions of race, identity, and climate. Sánchez Noa earned his BFA from The Cooper Union in 2020, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2023. Recent exhibitions of his work include Pathways at Rollings Museum of Art, Orlando, FL (2024); Once at Cleve Carney Museum of Art, Chicago, IL (2023); Rastros en el tiempo at The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, New York (2022); and Kunstnernes Efterårsudstilling at Den Frie Centre of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen, Denmark (2021).

Kate VanVliet (b. 1985) is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Philadelphia, PA. She is a Director of BYO Printmaking Collaborative, a nonprofit community printshop, which she co-founded in 2010 as an artist collective. She received a BFA from Moore College of Art & Design in 2007. She was a resident at Vermont Studio Center in 2017 and was the 2018–2019 printmaker in residence at Cheltenham Arts Center. In 2022, VanVliet co-curated Solastalgia: Redefining Home in Precarious Times, presented at SGCI: Our Shared Future, in Madison, WI. Her work is in numerous private collections. Public collections include The Free Library of Philadelphia, Zuckerman Museum of Art, William Penn Foundation, Bowes Art & Architecture Library at Stanford University and Moore College of Art & Design. She teaches printmaking at Cheltenham Arts Center, and offers tutoring at BYO Print. VanVliet is represented by Paradigm Gallery + Studio (Philadelphia).

Board of Directors Staff

David Sabel Chair

Mary Beth Forshaw Vice Chair

Andrea Butler

Secretary

Stewart K.P. Gross

Treasurer

Anders Bergstrom

Judith K. Brodsky

Anne Coffin, Founder

Donald T. Fallati

Jennifer Farrell

Starr Figura

Mark Thomas Gibson

Joseph Goddu

Lily A. Herzan

Evelyn Lasry

Sabina Menschel

Brooke A. Minto

John Morning, Founding Chair

Daniel Nardello

Martin Nash

Janice C. Oresman, Emerit

Maud Welles

Judy Hecker Executive Director

Jenn Bratovich Director of Exhibitions and Programs

Natalie Elder Administrative Manager

Aaron Fisher Registrar and Gallery Operations Manager

Tiffany Nesbit Director of Development and External Affairs

Taia Pollock Visitor Engagement Assistant

Alex Santana Curatorial Associate

Stephanie Santana External Affairs Coordinator

Robin Siddall Exhibitions and Programs Coordinator

Published on the occasion of the exhibition New Voices: Ritual

Print Center New York

June 6–August 24, 2024

Organized by Olivia Shao, with Robin Siddall

ISBN: 978-1-7341224-4-2

Edited by Jenn Bratovich and Robin Siddall

Design by CHIPS

Print Center New York thanks The Wolf Kahn Foundation and The Emily Mason | Alice Trumbull Foundation for their grant establishing the Emily Mason and Wolf Kahn Artist Development Fund.

Cover: Elnaz Javani, detail of Distant Closeness, 2023.