May 1 – June 30, 2021

When someone says “newspaper,” a very specific image is conjured in your mind. The artists in Fit to Print redefine the newspaper as we know it. For this exhibition, I was excited to extrapolate how artists materially deal with newspapers – in addition to how they address its often hotly debated subject matter. As a curator of a medium-specific institution dedicated to contemporary photography and printmaking, it is my responsibility to fuse form and content, parsing out the many ways artists interpret and execute these mediums today. It’s an honor to work with Lisa Blas, whose interest in the newspaper foregrounds her globally acclaimed practice as an artist.

Collaborating with curator Ksenia Nouril and The Print Center has been a dream come true. Ever since I began the "Monday’s Image" RSS feed in 2015, I envisioned organizing a group exhibition of peers who work with newspapers. I am passionate about the afterlife of images. Works of art occupy the time of their making and continue to send out lines of flight into the future. We skim or read the news and interpret images simultaneously, as if through automatic bodily function. I find the pairing of these two activities enormously instructive about the culture and time we are living in. My initial inquiry with Ksenia was met with enthusiasm. Over the course of a year of discussions and work, her expansive mind and curatorial expertise helped shape an idea into a show. Fit to Print is a meeting of vision and collaboration with the art community across generations and locations. I would like to express my utmost gratitude to The Print Center for its support of artists and bold engagement with the ideas outlining Fit to Print.

Lisa Blas, Beatriz González, Helena Hernmarck and Soledad Salamé 

Beatriz González, Jackeline Oasis, 1975, screenprint, 19 ¾” x 19 ¾”, edition of 25, master printer: Enrique Hernández. Courtesy of the Artist. Photo: Juan Rodríguez Varón; Soledad Salamé, Obama, 2019-2020, from the series “Layered News,” embroidered print, 12” x 12”. Courtesy of the Artist and Goya Contemporary Gallery, Baltimore. Photo: Michael Koryta

Circuits of Print includes the work of Lisa Blas, Beatriz González, Helena Hernmarck and Soledad Salamé, who re-present and recontextualize photographs and texts culled from newspapers in their prints, textiles and sculptures. Their diverse output is unified by common source material – the newspaper itself. Blas complements front pages of The New York Times with her work in painting and ephemera from art history. González uses the staged and candid photographs from above and below the fold as templates for her paintings, drawings and prints. Hernmarck also sees a direct correlation between what appears in the newspaper and in her works, as she transposes its printed pages through photography into textile. Salamé seamlessly traverses multiple mediums in a series of embroidered prints and glass sculptures that highlight key front page headlines and images from American and foreign newspapers published since the 9/11 attacks.

Jennifer Bolande, Chryssa, Jef Geys and Rita Maas

Jef Geys, Kempens Informatieblad (Fall 2003). Courtesy of Estate of Jef Geys; Rita Maas, January 7 - January 13, 2021, 2021, from the series “Today I Got Up,” Sharpie and reclaimed Epson ink, 22” x 17”, unique. Courtesy of the Artist

Print as Transposition foregrounds works by Jennifer Bolande, Chryssa, Jef Geys and Rita Maas, who use photographic and printmaking processes to transfer, merge, layer and cut images and texts from newspapers to create new compositions. Especially noteworthy is Chryssa’s iconic Newspaper, c.1962, borrowed from the Menil Collection, Houston, TX – a larger-than-life-sized broadsheet that confronts the viewer with a deluge of indecipherable information. Maas takes the opposite approach – stripping the front page bare of the majority of its contents by digitally cutting and pasting headline excerpts into compositions made with used ink cartridges. While Geys produces his own newspapers inspired by traditional formatting, Bolande cuts into the newspaper itself, drawing serendipitous parallels from its layout, specifically between press images.

Laura Fields, Dan Perjovschi, Donna Ruff and Paul Thek

Dan Perjovschi, The Wall after the Wall after the Wall… (Hope), 2015, ink on newsprint. Courtesy of the Artist; Donna Ruff, After Irma (Miami Herald), 2017, assembled print from photograms, 38” x 27”, edition of 3. Courtesy of the Artist and Rick Wester Fine Art, New York. Photo: Pedro Wazzan

Print Interventions examines the works of Laura Fields, Dan Perjovschi, Donna Ruff and Paul Thek who interact directly with the surface of newspapers – marking, cutting, pasting and rearranging the materiality of the newsprint itself. For several years, Fields has used the front pages of The New York Times as the foundation for her work. She extracts elements from its press photographs and transforms them into paintings, drawings and digital collages. Perjovschi makes quick and direct interventions that physically mark the page with handwritten texts and doodles. Ruff also alters the newsprint itself, using it as material for hand-cut geometric patterns that also form the basis for photograms. Newspapers were a popular substrate for Thek, too, as he prolifically painted onto broadsheets from around the world.

Wednesday, May 5, 6:00pm (ET) – presented on Zoom

Wednesday, June 16, 1:00pm (ET) – presented on Zoom

Speakers include Alice Centamore, art historian and writer based in Paris, who will present on Simone Forti’s “Newspaper Animations,” and Silvia Benedetti, curator and writer based in New York, who will present on the relationship between the media and artwork of Beatriz González.

Programs are free and open to the public. To register, email [email protected].