Multilayered: New Prints Summer/2018

Selected by Juan Sánchez

International Print Center New York (IPCNY) announces the 58th presentation of its New Prints Program, a biannual, juried open call for prints and print-based work created in the preceding 12 months. Titled Multilayered, the exhibition was selected by Juan Sánchez, one of the most significant artists of the Nuyorican cultural movement. As a multimedia artist with an activist stance, Sánchez draws on symbols, images, and texts from popular and traditional culture to explore questions of ethnic and national identity. Sánchez dedicates this exhibition to Sam Coronado (1946–2013), a printmaker, activist, and educator who dedicated his life to the Latinx arts community.  

The 43 prints and print-based works on view in Multilayered reflect Sánchez’s interest in new narratives for an increasingly hybridized cultural world. Many of the artists skillfully deploy traditional printmaking techniques, including lithography, etching, woodcut, and screenprints, to create enigmatic characters and complex scenes, while others use prints as the basis for expansive installations. In this exhibition, Sánchez also places particular emphasis on hand-made artist books, many of which overtly address current social and political themes. These include Consent, by Leonie Bradley & Catherine Cartwright, Talking to Myself by Jeanine Coupe Ryding, and Wherease, We Declare by KaKeArt (Ann Kalmbach and Tatana Kellner). 

The artists on view also display a particular propensity towards experimenting with mediums, combining traditional commercial materials with a great variety of handmade papers, and adding embroidery, gold leaf, and even mushroom spores to their prints. 

The New Prints Program is open internationally, and this presentation includes artists from Iran, Indonesia, Italy, Poland, as well as the United States and Canada. All artists selected for the exhibition have also been invited to apply for the third cycle of IPCNY’s New Prints Artist Development Program, which consists of three opportunities to receive further training, guidance, and exposure for their printmaking practice: a month-long residency program, divided between IPCNY’s workshop space and its partner EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop; a mentorship program designed to provide the artist with critical feedback, career guidance, and introductions in the field; and sponsored coursework at a workshop or school of the artist’s choice. The three awardees will be announced upon the exhibition’s opening. 

Visit www.ipcny.org for the full artist list.

About the juror
Printmaker, painter, photographer, and video artist Juan Sánchez was born to Puerto Rican parents in Brooklyn, New York. He is part of a generation of artists, such as Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Pepón Osorio, and Papo Colo, who in the 1980s and ’90s explored questions of ethnic, racial and national identity in their work.

About New Prints
IPCNY’s New Prints program was created as a platform for artists from the widest possible range of backgrounds working in the medium of print. The semi-annual open call welcomes all formats and techniques, as long as the work was produced in the preceding 12 months. The resulting exhibitions offer snapshots of the trends and concerns that artists are contending with in the moment, lending a sense of immediacy to each presentation.  

The New Prints program is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts and, in part, by the Areté Foundation. Support for all programs and exhibitions at IPCNY is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and by Foundations including: Deborah Loeb Brice Foundation, Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, The Jockey Hollow Foundation, the Thompson Family Foundation, the New York Community Trust, and the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, Inc.; along with major individual support. A grant from the PECO Foundation supports IPCNY’s exhibition program this season.