Foreword Judy Hecker, Executive Director

Foreword

Print Center New York is thrilled to inaugurate our new, ground-floor space at 535 West 24th Street with Visual Record: The Materiality of Sound in Print, organized by Elleree Erdos and presented in the Jordan Schnitzer Gallery. This interdisciplinary exhibition exemplifies the ambitions of our organization, presenting printmaking as a fluid medium that connects to broader ideas and practices. In this show, expansive monotypes and intricate etchings live alongside cast objects and installations that bring sound into the gallery. It is a coming together of fifteen artists whose works show that the relationship between the physical and sensorial properties of print and sound is an open-ended proposition, playing out in key themes of the body, identity, history, and place.

Visual Record began in early 2020 when Erdos came to us with the idea of exploring this new area of scholarship. It feels like a lifetime ago: before Print Center

New York embarked on a journey to a new space; before Erdos stepped into the position of Director of Prints and Editions at David Zwirner. Over two years, one transformational move, and many conversations later, we are delighted to be able to give this exhibition a fuller presentation than we could have imagined at the start.

Visual Record arrives as Print Center New York looks to the future and begins its next chapter. We’re asking: What does contemporary (and historical) printmaking contribute to our moment? How is print woven into cultural production at large? This exhibition poses its own questions: What do sound and print have to say about each other? How do artists move among mediums and processes? What is a record, an impression?

This publication expands the dialogues in Erdos’s show by bringing together contributions from art historian Jennifer L. Roberts and composer and writer David Toop. As her insightful text here shows, Roberts has brought new ways of thinking to bear on the study of printmaking, envisioning the craft of print as an embodied set of practices with philosophical implications. We are happy that she has made this medium a home. Toop’s essay hums with the rhythm of a writer who is also a practitioner—a maker of music, and a student of sound—lending us a welcome perspective from outside our field and enriching our thinking.

I am grateful to Erdos, a longtime ambassador of our medium, for her original perspective and collaborative spirit. We extend our deep thanks to all the lenders who made these works available to us, and in particular we highlight Anthony Allen, Sasha Baguskas, Alexis Johnson, Lisa Kolhi, Kristin Soderqvist, Julia Speed,

and Valerie Wade for their assistance. Moreover, we thank the artists in Visual Record for their enthusiastic embrace of this project and for creating the works that inspired it.

We thank our preparators for their work installing this first exhibition in our new space, with special thanks to Liz Naiden, who sensitively handled the exhibition’s sound and tech support. Finally, this publication—the first in Print Center New York’s new series—owes its design to Adam Squires at CHIPS, who also thoughtfully led our organization’s rebrand this year. We are grateful to the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation for supporting this publication, enabling us to expand upon the ideas in Visual Record and share this project with new audiences.

I am deeply appreciative of Print Center New York’s talented staff, in particular Jenn Bratovich, Director of Exhibitions and Programs, who brought this unconventional project to fruition while we undertook a move and reopening that was unprecedented in our institution’s history. Finally, as we open the doors to our next chapter, I extend my gratitude to Print Center New York’s Board of Trustees, for supporting such an ambitious and exciting first season of programming, and to Jordan Schnitzer for his leadership support.

Peter Fischli/David Weiss Record (for Parkett), 1988

Glenn Ligon Detail, 2014