Cutting Edges:
Painters' Woodcuts from Experimental Workshop

By presenting contemporary prints in an exhibition following Icons of Industrial Expansion: American Precisionist Prints, 1925-1941, the Mishkin Gallery continues its spring semester emphasis on printmaking. Curated by Ann McLaughlin, the exhibition Cutting Edges: Painters' Woodcuts brings together 40 experimental woodblock prints produced at the Experimental Workshop, many as large as contemporary paintings. These prints reflect the wide range of visual subjects and styles that characterize current painting, from minimalist to expressionist. They also demonstrate an equally strong use of color, some of them using as many as thirty-eight different hues. Featured artists include Gregory Amenoff, David Bates, Richard Bosnian, Christopher Brown, Suzanne Caporael, Squeak Carnwath, Aaron Fink, Wade Hoefer, Yvonne Jacquette, Deborah Oropallo, Sabina Ott, Joseph Raffael, and Robin Winters.

Focusing on both the aesthetic and technical aspects of this under-exposed medium, the exhibition reveals how contemporary painters have mastered and expanded one of the oldest printing traditions, first used in ninth-century China to illustrate Buddhist scriptures. In addition to the prints, the woodblocks used to make them and examples of prints in various states are also included in the exhibition. Founded in 1972 by Ann McLaughlin and Garner Tullis as a place to expand the technical boundaries of papermaking and large-scale printing, the Experimental Workshop (located in a 12,000 square foot warehouse on San Francisco's waterfront) has drawn a host of renowned American and international artists to its studios.

© 1998 Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College