PrintAustin's 5x5 Catalog, 2021

P R I N TA U S T I N 2021 THE CONTEMPORARY PRINT: 5x5 CHLOE ALEXANDER JOHN KLOSTERMAN IV OLIVER PILIC LAURA R. POST CLEO WILKINSON

January 15 - February 19, 2021

P R I N TA U S T I N

THE CONTEMPORARY PRINT: 5x5 Presented in partnership with Big Medium Juried by Delita Martin

PRINTAUSTIN PrintAustin is an artist-led nonprofit working with local venues and artists to showcase traditional and contemporary approaches in printmaking. The annual festival will take place January 15-February 15, 2021, and offer both safe in-person printmaking focused experiences and virtual programming. For more information, visit printaustin.org.

THE CONTEMPORARY PRINT In partnership with Big Medium, PrintAustin’s 8th annual international juried exhibition, The Contemporary Print: 5x5, is juried by Delita Martin of Black Box Press Studio. This virtual exhibition showcases five works by five contemporary artists from the United States, Australia, and Slovenia, giving us a broad survey of printmaking happening across the globe. In-depth artist features and online programming highlighting this year’s selected artists can be found on printaustin.org.

BIG MEDIUM Big Medium is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting artists and building community through the arts in Austin and across Texas. Big Medium provides opportunities for artists to create, exhibit, and discuss their work and connect to an engaged and diverse audience, while striving to make art a part of everyday life.

Big Medium produces the East and West Austin Studio Tours, Texas Biennial, Creative Standard, Tito's Prize, The LINE Residency, Artist Registry, provides a dedicated space for innovative and experimental exhibitions through the Big Medium Gallery, and provides studio space for over 60 artists at Canopy. Further information is available at bigmedium.org or email info@bigmedium.org.

Delita Martin in her studio. Image courtesy of the artist.

ABOUT THE JUROR Delita Martin is a Texas-based artist and printmaker, and owner of Black Box Press Studio. Her work combines printmaking with drawing, painting, hand-stitching, and collage to create a visual language that offers insight into the marginalization of Black women. Her vibrant and powerful works are nationally and internationally recognized, having appeared in several publications, book covers, and in mainstream movies. Formerly a member of the fine arts faculty at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Delita has exhibited her work in State of the Arts: Discovering American Art Now, and was named one of sixteen African American artists to watch by the International Review of African American Art. She is also set to be the Keynote Speaker at the Mid America Print Council Conference Power of Print: Resistance & Revolution at Kent State University later this fall.

Through Black Box Press Studio, Delita founded the initiative Art As Activism Fund, whose mission is to support artists in the production of an exhibition that brings together the creative energy of the arts to move us emotionally with the strategic planning of activism necessary to bring about social change. The fund is a targeted initiative to bring focus to how art can be used as a captivating means of shifting perspectives, changing mindsets, and evoking powerful emotions, which can have a broad effect on the landscape and discourse around social justice in the world. Black Box Press Studio offers limited edition prints and other merch as a means to support this fund. blackboxpressstudio.com

Chloe Alexander, Army of One, 2019, Silkscreen and ink, 22" x 22"

CHLOE ALEXANDER Atlanta, Georgia

“My work is a form of storytelling. Inspired by the rich, high contrast illustrations found in illuminated texts, graphic novels and children’s fairy tales, the often-whimsical imagery and characters that I create are meant to provoke a sense of nostalgia and familiarity within the viewer. I work primarily in printmaking and print-based mixed media. Printmaking is my medium of choice due to its physical and problem-solving demands upon the artist, who at times must give in to the will of materials that often yield results that are not fully predictable.

The constant communication between the matrix and the inks along with chemical alchemy inherently inform each stage of my image making process. In tandem with the history of print as a form of communication, I aspire to create visual language that transcends the prescriptive and often ephemeral nature of spoken words. My hope is that a broad audience is able to access the universality of the motifs that I employ, and once immersed in these narratives, they will then add to, alter, or re-imagine the intent of my original ideas based on their own assumptions and personal experiences.” -- Chloe Alexander thehaplessprintmaker.com @thehaplessprintmaker

Chloe Alexander, Etienne, 2019, Silkscreen, monotype, and charcoal, 20" x 20"

Chloe Alexander, Aiden, 2019, Silkscreen, monoprint, and charcoal, 20" x 20"

Chloe Alexander, Something to Believe in, 2020, Silkscreen, 15" x 22"

Chloe Alexander, The Binds That Untie Us, 2019, Woodcut, 41" x 29"

John Klosterman IV, Fish River, 2019, Monotype, chemical transfer, and silkscreen, 24" x 36"

JOHN KLOSTERMAN IV Tuscaloosa, Alabama

“The goal from Manifestations was to allow for a thorough self-examination of my mental health, specifically my struggle with anxiety and OCD. I wanted to manifest the fear and dismay I felt when I realized that I could not remain in control of myself. I use vultures and various birds of prey to depict the omnipresent oppressive feeling of my anxiety. They hover above my head and glare at me from the shadows as they wait for me to fail.

I use family photographs and chemically transferred landscapes to hint at its possible origins. My appropriation of these captured moments allows me to revisit places or relationships that were a part of my upbringing. I printed repetitive frame by frame stills and exhaustingly detailed diagrams over objects and landscapes. These transparent diagrams represent my struggle with obsessive compulsive thoughts. Each piece is a confrontation of specific facet of my mental health struggle. This process allows me to come to terms and live with my reality.”

-- John Klosterman IV @klosterphobic_artist

John Klosterman IV, Railway, 2019, Monotype, chemical transfer, silkscreen, and chine collé, 18" x 24"

John Klosterman IV, Kevin Won't Share, 2019, Monotype, chemical transfer, silkscreen, and linocut (chine collé), 18" x 24"

John Klosterman IV, Olsson's Rot, 2019, Monotype, chemical transfer, silkscreen, & linocut (chine collé), 18" x 24"

John Klosterman IV, 43, 2019, Monotype, chemical transfer, silkscreen, and linocut, 30" x 56"

Oliver Pilic, Pearl Earring, 2017, Hand-printed woodcut on paper, 26" x 34"

OLIVER PILIC

Kamnik, Slovenia “It's important for me to find productive ways of thinking. Central aspect of my work is the relation between materiality and immateriality, between substance and digital, and questioning of image manipulation today. I am interested in a relation between original and reproduction or analog process of work and computer-manipulated digital information. In the process of work, I combine the earliest reproduction process of woodcut and digitalgenerated bitmap image wherein in the final footprint appears complex shapes between raster bitmap image, the subtractive colour mix and wood grain. I understand the analog process of woodcut as (sculptural) removal of substance in a confrontation with combining digital images of wax figures, drawings and random internet photographs. In the field of art I am interested in the relation between ideological field, theory of contemporary art, fusion of “political portrait” and the modern concept of the internet “meme”. My work encroaches into fields of graphic prints, site-specific installation, painting, drawing, ready-made objects and photography.” -- Oliver Pilic @olivierpilic

Oliver Pilic, Landscape 2, 2017, Hand-printed woodcut on paper, 34" x 26"

Oliver Pilic, Texas Queen, 2016, Hand-printed woodcut on paper, 34" x 26"

Oliver Pilic, Swipe Up (114 prints), 2020, Hand-printed woodcut on toilet tissue paper, 4" x 4"

Oliver Pilic, Followed by, 2020, Hand-printed woodcut on paper, 34" x 26"

Laura R. Post, Tension, 2019, Cast handmade paper and woodcut, 31" x 22"

LAURA R. POST Fort Worth, Texas

“My work redefines portraiture by expanding the boundaries of the print medium. By combining matrices that span the origins of the medium to the newest technologies, I create multi-faceted paper sculptures to explore how individuals are shaped by their familial network. This includes non-Western and Western traditional print processes, handmade paper, and post-digital techniques to expand the definition of printmaking and redefine portraiture. My practice is a means to connect with local, national, and international communities and individuals, including my portrait subjects and family networks, as well as traditional artisans and technicians for new technologies.

Print’s legacy continues to intersect with craft, tradition, multiplicity, and layering, through both traditional and new technologies. My work relies on these fundamental principles of printmaking as a means to break down ideas, then reconstitute them through matrices. My matrices now include Chinese woodblock prints, engravings, paper molds, life casts, 3D scans, and CNC routed molds. The resulting paper sculptures speak to layers of an individual, and the familial network that shapes them. They weave narratives about relationships that shape a person, and the emotional state of an individual, reaching beyond a traditional portrait.

My work interferes with expectations of the medium in order to expand its possibilities. I reconsider the stability provided by a matrix to produce varied outcomes, generating a new whole from the repetition of parts.

The artwork interrogates the history of printmaking and papermaking, as well as their voice in contemporary art. I use print as a way of rethinking and reestablishing bonds to those nearest to me. In my exploration of people and relationships, my work creates new dialogues between traditional and cutting edge techniques, their practitioners, and contemporary communities.” -- Laura R. Post lrpstudio.com @laurarpost

Laura R. Post, Wishful Thinking Counterpoint, 2019, Cast handmade paper and woodcut, 14" x 15" x 10"

Laura R. Post, Intimate Facets, 2018, Cast handmade paper, woodcut, and drypoint, 22" x 17" x 15"

Laura R. Post, Fractured Transition, 2018, Cast handmade paper, woodcut, and drypoint, 22" x 18" x 10"

Laura R. Post, Breaking Through, 2020, Cast handmade paper and drawing, 27" x 16" x 12"

Cleo Wilkinson, Then IV , 2020, Mezzotint, 4.72" x 4.72"

CLEO WILKINSON Brisbane, Australia

“Nursing an image out of its black womb into light has a primordial spiritual magic. I try to emphasize the singularity silence and loneliness of a form. What is missing in the shadows and is suggested provides the greatest potential. The Mezzotint Print technique has remained unchanged for the last 300 years. It achieves tonality by roughening the metal plate with a rocker to produce a rich black, creating a high level of tonal richness.” -- Cleo Wilkinson

cleosart.com

Cleo Wilkinson, Pledge, 2015, Mezzotint , 12" x 16"

Cleo Wilkinson, Obsolescence, 2019, Mezzotint, 12" x 12"

Cleo Wilkinson, Inception V, 2020, Mezzotint, 4" x 4"

Cleo Wilkinson, Witness II , 2018, Mezzotint, 4" x 4"

info@printaustin.org printaustin.org

A special thanks to our sponsors for helping to make The Contemporary Print: 5x5 possible: This project is supported in part by the Cultural Arts Division of the City of Austin Economic Development Department and other private donors.