Editions: Jeffrey Gibson, Kay Rosen, Erin Shirreff, Kara Walker
September 3–October 5, 2019
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. is pleased to present a selection of editions by gallery artists Jeffrey Gibson, Erin Shirreff, Kara Walker, and Kay Rosen, on view in the back gallery from September 3 through October 5.
Jeffrey Gibson’s new series of multimedia prints, feature vivid, screen-printed letters collaged onto a digitally printed background. Adapting lyrics from popular dance songs of the eighties and nineties, Gibson prints highlight the centrality of joy and celebration as a form of strength and resistance for marginalized communities. Published by Sikkema Jenkins & Co. and printed by the Lower East Side Printshop, each print is an edition of 30, and comes with a custom color frame.
Kay Rosen’s edition, The Man, is centered around the idea of formal and textual transformation. Spanning the wall in a series of vinyl letters, The Man composes a narrative based on repeated phrases and wordplay. The body of “The Man” is deconstructed across each line of text, as a series of interconnected linguistic relationships rather than a cohesive singular identity. Rosen’s work utilizes the force of language, or a singular word, to recontextualize language as a visual experience.
Erin Shirreff’s Four Heads diptych appropriates Jean Arp painted wood sculpture Two Heads (1929). Using the printing methods of photogravure and Chine-collé, Four Heads reconfigures the three-dimensional forms and edges of Arp’s sculpture on a two-dimensional plane. By reinterpreting traditional representations of image, form, and dimensionality, Shirreff’s work asks viewer’s how to negotiate the difference between object and photographic representation.
The High Note, The Low Note, The Psychotic and The Judge (2018) by Kara Walker is a painted-laser cut stainless steel sculpture produced as a limited edition for the Camden Arts Centre in London. Fabricated by Workshop Art Fabricator in Kingston, NY, The High Note features four grotesque faces bisecting one another on two opposing steel sheets. Walker’s work reveals the multiple identities implicated by the horrors of slavery and white supremacy.