IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair 2019: Programming and Projects

Wednesday, October 23, 5pm - 9pm | Opening Night Reception. Join us for drinks and prints at this exclusive preview of the IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair. Tickets are now on sale. All proceeds benefit the IFPDA Foundation.

Thursday, October 24, 1pm | Collecting Modern and Contemporary Prints with Sarah Kirk Hanley. This program will include a lecture followed by a walkabout of the fair. Sarah Kirk Hanley is the Executive Director of Manhattan Graphics Center.

Thursday, October 24, 7pm - 9pm | Young Collectors Cocktails. Tickets available. All proceeds benefit the IFPDA Foundation.

Thursday, October 24, 7pm | A Conversation with Trent Morse & Tim Goossens, Executive Editor at 1stdibs; Independent Curator and Associate Director, Non-Degree Programs and Adjunct Faculty, MA Programs at Sotheby's Institute of Art. Free with ticket purchase to Young Collectors Cocktails.

Friday, October 25, ​12:30pm | A Conversation with Jeff Koons and Christophe Cherix. Artist Jeff Koons and Christophe Cherix, The Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings and Prints at The Museum of Modern Art, will be engaging in a public conversation about the nature of prints and multiples, what constitutes an original in the 21st century, and the role of printmaking in the artist's body of work.

Friday, October 25, 5pm | The Collaborative Process of Fine Art Printmaking: Phil Sanders in Conversation with James Nares and Jean-Paul Russell. Phil Sanders, master printer and author of the forthcoming publication, Prints and Their Makers; The Collaborative Process (2020, Princeton Architecture Press) leads a conversation with artist James Nares and Durham Press master printer Jean-Paul Russell about innovative collaborations and the importance of the artist/printer relationship.

Friday, October 25, 6pm | A Buyer's Guide to Prints with Helen Rosslyn. Helen Rosslyn, Tatler Magazine’s Arts Editor, Director of the London Original Print Fair and author of Royal Academy publication A Buyer’s Guide to Prints, demystifies the wonderful world of prints and printmaking and talks about her thirty years running the Print Fair in London. Helen will also be available after the talk to sign copies of her book, A Buyer's Guide to Prints.

Saturday, October 26, 12pm | Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation Lecture, presented by Jim Dine. A discussion with Jim Dine and master printers Ruth Lingen and Julia D’Amario

Saturday, October 26, 1:30pm | Jordan Schnitzer Awards for Excellence in Printmaking. Presentation of awards to artists Mel Bochner & Matthew Day Jackson, followed by a discussion with Jordan Schnitzer.

Saturday, October 26, 3pm | Pure Etching A conversation with poet, critic and curator, John Yau & artist William Tillyer. William Tillyer is featured in the inaugural Project section of this year's fair. See more information about his project below.

Sunday, October 27, 12pm | Meet the ArtistsMeet and chat with exhibitors, artists, and printmakers at this interactive event. Artists and printmakers will be available in booths to discuss their work and answer your questions. Full list of attending artists below:Matt Saunders | BORCH Editions, Booth 210Anton Würth | C.G. Boerner & Harris Schrank Fine Arts, Booth 317Erik Desmazières | Childs Gallery, Booth 216Fred Eversley | Cirrus Gallery & Cirrus Editions, Ltd., Booth 314Rachel Selekman, Steve Ford, Amze Emmons & Nona Hershey | Dolan/Maxwell, Booth 407Liliana Porter | Krakow Witkin, Booth 403Jacob Hashimoto | Mixografia, Booth 310Robert Kelly | Tandem Press, Booth 311Ethel Shipton & Nate Cassie | Ruiz-Healy Art, Booth 306Barbara Takenaga, Yvonne Jacquette, Claire Sherman, & Fred Stonehouse | Shark's Ink, Booth 102Danielle Orchard | Tamarind Institute, Booth 106Lothar Osterburg | Emanuel von Baeyer London, Booth 107Sunday, October 27, 2pm | Living History in Contemporary Printmaking: The New Renaissance of Etching. A conversation with artist Swoon, Nadine Orenstein, Drue Heinz Curator in Charge, Department of Drawings & Prints, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Jenny Gibbs, Executive Director of the IFPDA; moderated by Sarah Douglas, Editor-in-Chief, ARTnews.

SPECIAL PROJECT

Swoon (Caledonia Curry) has created a site-specific installation for the IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair, as featured in Barron's and ARTnews. The project was planned in conversation with Nadine M. Orenstein, Drue Heinz Curator in Charge of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Department of Drawings and Prints, as a way to engage visitors at the IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair with the exhibition The Renaissance of Etching opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art concurrent with the fair. To highlight the medium of etching, booths at the fair that feature this type of print are highlighted in the floorplan so that visitors can explore 500 years of this important technique.

PROJECT 1 - Mel Bochner, Presented by TWO PALMS, New York, NYTWO PALMS will present a newly created site-specific Measurement: 24’ by Mel Bochner (1940, USA), marking the 50th anniversary of the artist’s first Measurement Room from 1969. Recognized as one of the leading figures in the development of Conceptual Art in New York in the 1960-70s, Bochner pioneered the play between the characteristics of numerical values, space, and language in his work. This presentation comes on the eve of a newly commissioned large-scale Measurement Room exhibition at Dia:Beacon in Fall 2019.In May 1969, Bochner realized the first works in his ongoing Measurement series, using black tape to draw simple, linear segments across the surfaces of Heiner Friedrich’s Munich gallery. Punctuating these lines were numbers that corresponded to the length of the measured surface: the width of a window bay, the height of a doorframe, and so on. Several of the measurements were further subdivided, indicated by notched marks interspersed at intervals across a wall. In this work, as in subsequent iterations of the series, Bochner used lines to wrap around the architectural envelope of the gallery space in a systematic evaluation of its spatial parameters and the perceptual experience that unfolds within it.At the fair, Bochner will install the measurement piece on a 24-foot project wall. The work is comprised of a group of silkscreens mounted on aluminum, lined up seamlessly at different heights along the wall. Running through the silkscreens is a white line with the length of the wall indicated in the center.

PROJECT 2 - The Printed Portrait, Presented by Cristea Roberts Gallery, London, UKCristea Roberts Gallery will display an array of iconic portraits realized in a wide range of print media by some of the best modern and contemporary printmakers, working with some of the most important print studios and master printers.The exhibit will include Picasso’s seminal portrait of Françoise Gilot, La Femme à la fenêtre- a tour de force of etching and one of the artist’s best known prints. Also on display will be one of David Hockney’s best known depictions of his friend and muse Celia Birtwell, whose image has appeared in various guises throughout his printmaking oeuvre. Alongside these is a portrait of the American artist Nicole Eisenman by Georg Baselitz, part of his seminal print portfolio entitled Devotion which consisted of over 30 portraits of artists whose work he admires or has been influenced by. Richard Hamilton is represented by his unique and innovative self-portrait based on a rejected Polaroid taken by the painter Francis Bacon. Jim Dine has created numerous portraits during his career and this will be the first ever presentation of a unique 1973 hand-painted etching of Nancy Reading. Portraiture has always been a fundamental part Julian Opie’s work, and on display will be two family portraits based on historical silhouettes and Japanese paper cutting.

PROJECT 3 - William Tillyer, Presented by Bernard Jacobson Graphics, London, UKBernard Jacobson Graphics will show a selection of early 1970s etchings by William Tillyer. These were produced after Tillyer had been studying printing techniques with Anthony Gross in London and Stanley William Hayter in Paris. At this stage, Tillyer had his first shows at the Serpentine Gallery and the Arnolfini in Bristol. He had also begun to teach printing at several art schools in London. This point in Tillyer’s career saw him discover the lattice: a neutral grid, where each line is evenly spaced and each line connects to all others according to rigorous geometry. It was to prove groundbreaking for his art and was a perfect illustration of his belief that everything is connected, and the grid remains central to his paintings to this day.In producing these lattice grids, the artist screen-printed the grid pattern onto an etching plate. Then, by covering different areas of the plate, he developed the image, without drawing any line. This made it possible to remove any evidence of the hand of the artist. Tillyer dubbed this technique “Pure Etching”. Seen from a distance the images seem clear, almost photographic, but as one moves closer the deeply etched pattern creates a dizzying effect of reality dissolving into abstract line. The images in turn present cool modernist glass houses in landscape settings; in some cars are seen parked on the drive beyond the glass walls, in others modernist furniture inside the buildings is seen through the walls from outside, the transparency of the subject echoing the transparency of Tillyer’s etching technique itself, as though everything is seen through multiple screens. It was these “mechanized images” (as Pat Gilmore described them) that started the lifelong collaboration between Bernard Jacobson and William Tillyer.