Black Heart Press

Are you following Keystone Editions on Facebook yet?

If not, what are you waiting for?! The picture above shows their current project with Anselmo Fox. It involves some big ass snails, tasty cucumber, photocopy toner and a very very nice litho shop run by two Tamarind Master Printers.

I spent the last four days editioning and am really tired, so this one will be short and sweet.

Further reading:

Keystone Editions on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Keystone-Editions/139092916132515 

Keystone Editions website:
http://www.keystone-editions.net/

Anselmo Fox:
http://www.anselmofox.eu/ 

Black Heart Berlin Tidbit #4

Not sure if it is really number four. Might also be three, too lazy to check. Either way, I’m still sifting the capital for printmaking goodies. Not that anyone cares, but here goes today’s spotlight:

Jiří Šalamoun

Seen at Kunstbibliothek, in a show called “I Dreamt I Was a Dog That Dreams” together with Hans Hillmann. Two artists, Hillmann born 1929, Šalamoun born 1935, both working in the grey area between “free” and “applied” art. Very refreshing contrast between Hillmann’s cool greyscale style and Šalamoun’s at times whacky East-Europeaness.

The works pictured above are lithographies by Jiří Šalamoun, two excerpts from a series called “Basic Phrenology”.

Further reading:

Check this link for a nice gallery of Šalamoun’s and Hillmann’s works from the exhibition. It’s in German, but all you need to do is click on the first image:
http://www.berlin.de/kultur-und-tickets/fotos/ausstellungen/2181229-1742117.gallery.html?page=1

I lifted the images linked above from the 50 Watts website. Here’s the 50 Watts tumblr:
http://50watts.tumblr.com/
And here’s the original post with more “Basic Phrenology” pics:
http://50watts.com/#1162540/Basic-Phrenology

Thumbs up for One Piece:
http://payload.cargocollective.com/1/2/88505/1162540/06%20Errata-%20Ji%20alamoun%20%281935%29-%20lithography-%201970.jpg

Link to the exhibition:
http://www.smb.museum/smb/kalender/details.php?objID=24922&typeId=10

Maxipes Fik - J.Š. as animator:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWFt2LX28aQ

Albrecht Altdorfer
Christ at the cross (The great crucification)
Regensburg, 1515-1523
Engraving 146x100mm

Black Heart Berlin Tidbit #3

News from the Kupferstichkabinett. A print that stayed in my mind for quite a while was Albrecht Altdorfer’s “Christ at the cross” (..on the cross?), an engraving dated between 1515 and 1523. The location of the crucification scene is striking, in some sort of a forest, overcast by a dramatic dark sky. 

Some of you might know Albrecht Altdorfer (born only ten years after Dürer) for his “Battle of Alexander” of 1529, which has the fun wiki-quote:

If ever a work of art merited comparison with epic poetry, “The Battle of Issus” [or Alexander] is it.

Epic.

Further reading:

Kupferstichkabinett?
http://blackheartpress.tumblr.com/post/15798833301/kupferstichkabinett

Albrecht Altdorfer @ Gemaeldegalerie:
http://www.smb.museum/smb/kalender/details.php?objID=36113&typeId=10

The engraving “Christus am Kreuz” in detail:
http://kk.haum-bs.de/?id=a-altdorfer-ab3-0008

Black Heart Berlin Tidbit #2

Hercules Segers (Seghers)

At the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, going through the treasures of their immense collection (more than 300.000 works). One of my all-time favourites is Dutch printmaking superhero Hercules Segers. The photo I linked above was taken from the internet, I saw a version looking very much like it, HB 46b “Ruins of the Abbey Rijnsburg”. A wonderful print on brown coloured paper, printed in light yellow / off-white.

Pointless to praise the amazing details and hues of yellow while showing a rather sad .jpg of it - next time you are in Berlin, take a day to stop by and have a look for yourself. It’s definitely worth it.

Study hall tangent:

As we all know, printmakers are generally social and welcoming people that prefer being on their own, undisturbed in the printshop. People working in a collection of prints are a hybrid breed of printmaker and museum guard: friendly people whose only wish is that you had left about an hour ago. The educated visitor can see this in the sad, resigned look they cast your way when entering the study hall.
No rant, just a fun fact.

It’s also curious to know that most collections aren’t entirely sure about what they have - it’s expensive and time consuming to catalogize a collection of 300.000+ works. No searchable databases, so you’ve just got to go there and ask for the print (or plate!) you want to see, and they’ll bring what they find in the archive for that artist - then it’s up to you to dig through the stack. <3

Further reading:

Why libraries are awesome:
Amazon.com - Hercules Seghers. The complete etchings.

The HB number next to Segers’ prints refers to the number Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann (Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts Research in 1965) gave the prints in his catalogue raisonné of Segers. A letter after the number denotes variants. (ie. HB 46c is 201x318mm and in the collection of the British Museum in London, whereas 46b is the collection of the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin).

Black Heart Berlin Tidbit #1

ALEXANDER ESTERS

Seen at Feldbusch Wiesner (Linienstr. 155, 10115 Berlin). Caught my eye because it looked like print on canvas (and because I wrote about the Romanian woodcut twins not long ago). Turns out his earlier works were indeed a mixture of linocut, paint and drawing.

Dissatisfied with linocut Esters came up with a method he calls “PVC-print”. I’ve send him an email to ask for details, but my guess is that the artist works on thicker pvc foil, cutting it into the desired shapes, then inks up the foil and prints it on the painting. In the work below I’m quite sure the white areas are done that way - the ink pattern at times looks reminiscent of surrealist decalcomanies and monotypes.

Dicke Lippe (Fat Lip), 2010 
Oil, acryl, printing ink, pencil and PVC-print on canvas
160 x 130 cm

Further reading:

Alexander Esters
http://www.alexanderesters.com/

Feldbusch Wiesner:
http://www.feldbuschwiesner.de

This is where I’ll be hanging out the next two weeks:
The amazing Kupferstichkabinett, (which btw should have really come up with a better “international” name than “Museum of Drawing and Prints”) or more specific: the study hall of the Kupferstichkabinett, examining requested prints up close.

Above-linked video to water your mouths a little bit.

Further reading:

Tabor Presse Berlin:
http://taboerlin.de/werk.html

Keystone Editions:
http://www.keystone-editions.net/

Suggestions?
http://blackheartpress.tumblr.com/ask

Jorinde Voigt
“Gardens of Pleasure”, 2011
Games of Love: 13 Views RED / 9 Views BLACK / 6 Views SKIN / 3 Views GREEN / 8 Views BLUE (Chinese erotic art / 17th Century) Countdown/ Countup in Sec.; Direction N-S; Wind direction/ Wind speed; Declination: Direction of Roation/ Rotation per day
Portfolio of 5 flat prints each annotated with ink
51 x 36 cm
On Inzisioni mould made paper 300g
Printer: Taborpresse, Berlin
Edition: 12, I, I, I

Jorinde Voigt, known for her amazing drawings, will show her first lithographic works in an exhibition that will open on Nov 19th (opening 18th, 19-21h) at Helga Maria Klosterfelde in Berlin. I’ve had the chance to meet Jorinde in 2009, and I’d highly recommend you go see that show - the preview picture of printed colour shapes and handwriting looks amazing already, they must be stunning in real life.

Here’s what the press text has to say [sic]:

Helga Maria Klosterfelde is happy to present a new Edition by Jorinde Voigt

In her latest series, “Gardens of Pleasure”, 2011, Jorinde Voigt combines notation methods with lithography for the first time. The work is comprised of five different motifs, each in an Edition of 15. While the title and colours are printed onto the paper, Voigt draws in the dynamic lines and figures by hand, creating considerable variation within each motif. The 75 sheet focus on paintings in the catalogue, “The Chinese Garden of Lust - Erotic Art from the Bertholet Collection,” printed in conjunction with an exhibition of the same name at the East Asian Art Collection of the Berlin State Museums in Dahlem (2011).

Form and Colour
Every area of colour represents one glance at the paintings by the artist. While her first observation represents a rough impression of the motif, Voigt comes closer to capturing the structure of the scene depicted with every additional look. Using a fan-booklet of colour samples, Voigt determines the corresponding numbers of the colours of robes, pairs of lovers, wallpaper, furniture, etc. The synchronised portrayal of colour and form enables us to recognise some elements such as tables, mirrors, locks of hair, or feet. Voigt systematises what she sees by distancing each individual colour from its original context and reuniting the colours on one new sheet.

Movement
Voigt supplements her almost mimetic method of representation with fictive spatial and temporal data. The arrows and numbers noted provide the Geographical Direction north and south. In addition, the information labelled Direction of Rotation, Speed of Rotation and Number of Rotations per Day sets the drawing into an imaginary revolving motion. Voigt also marks every translated look at the painting as either Countup or Countdown, so that it is possible to follow the viewing process. The numbered areas of colour, however, are not always conducive to a linear reading.

Rhythm
By frequently zooming in towards an object, Voigt achieves a depth quite similar to musical processes. She varies and repeats colours and forms until the characteristics of the object being viewed are filtered out. In pursuing this approach, Voigt references the Chinese and Japanese painting traditions, in which hundreds of views of one motif were produced. This school of work has been documented in anthologies such as “100 Views of Mount Fujii” or “Yoshitoshi’s One Hundred Aspects of the Moon.”

Perception
Voigt’s exacting study of the paintings exhibited corresponds to the basic idea of her work, which is to grasp reality as a microcosm. The artist accumulates up to 100 views on each sheet of paper, leading the collages to resemble a scientific table. Central to Voigt’s work is her fascination with the formal characteristics of the Chinese paintings and their effect on the process of viewing. The explicitly erotic content of the so-called “Spring Pictures” recedes completely into the background. Instead, the drawings appear to be a mental construct with which to investigate human perception, raising questions about language, cognition, intuition and association.

Further reading:

Jorinde Voigt
http://jorindevoigt.com/

Jorinde rocking the bluest gloves at the opening:
http://pinchukfund.org/upload/iblock/b1d/20101210-0401.jpg

Oh yeah
http://www.ggaadd.com/log/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/jorinde_207_sw_01-e1291384627618.jpg

Jorinde Voigt @ Den Haag Gemeentemuseum 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3EGkvi6QMQ

And because Jorinde made a cooperation with them, the amazing:
Driver & Driver (Patric Catani & Chris Imler) - Going back to L.A.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8sZj4t3NN8

Helga Maria Klosterfelde
http://www.helgamariaklosterfelde.de/

Handsome Boy Press
Samuel Seger & Patrick Wagner
Lithography, Kiel 2009

(Left side of the face: Patrick, shared nose, right side: Samuel - not the crispest print we ever made..)

When I drove to Berlin some weeks ago, I phoned a printshop there, Keystone Editions, and asked if I could drop in the next day – which didn’t work out, they had a printing run sheduled and no time for nosy visitors, understandably.
While I haven’t been there yet, it’s still a safe bet to say that Keystone Editions is an amazing place to go if in need of lithographic competence: run by printers Sarah Dudley and Ulrich Kühle, it is -to the extent of my knowledge- the only lithography printshop in Germany with printers trained at the Tamarind Institute. Ulrich Kühle also recieved years of training from the Kätelhön printshop, a landmark in the german printmaking world due to their wonderful book

„Die Radierung: Erfahrungen einer Kupferdruckerei“

The beautiful Keystone Editions workshop is equipped with two Karl Krause (Leipzig) presses and one Erasmus Sutter (Berlin) press, charismatic old presses, I’m personally very fond of presses by Sutter.
So: if in Berlin – go check them out!

While I was browsing the Keystone Editions website, I found among their new editions a suite of prints by Thomas Eller,

„using Vaseline as his drawing material, and his body as the mark-making tool“

I don’t even need to link the images, you already know what this means: a 100% chance of some guy printing his ass and scrotum. And you shall not be disappointed.

While it is most probably deeply rewarding to sell skillfully printed impressions of your vaselined wiener squeezed against a lithographic stone, it is also the oldest and most boring trick in the book, timelinewise usually situated somewhere in the first year of art academy. Samuel Seger and I did arm wrestling on our earliest stones, others their faces pressed against stone, norwegian girls covered stones in kisses, the list is endless.

During my drive towards Berlin I had a couple of hours to think about these prints, and why they annoyed me so much. There is probably more material about the art historic use of the body as a drawing tool, the symbolism of aboriginal hand-prints on cave walls, the cleverness of Yves Klein and his blue-painted frolicking beauties than one could care to read. It’s a veritable, returning theme that just won’t die – nor should it, really. And as we all know, it doesn’t matter if it has been done before, what matters is how it differs from the thing it is similar to.
Cruising at 140km/h it suddenly hit me – my own bigotry – in form of the realization that I most probably would have reacted differently were the marks on the stone not the folds of Thomas Eller’s wrinkly balls, but the delicate labium of an emerging female artist. Damn. Of course the concept would still be equally boring, but connotated according to my orientation, triggering a voyeuristic impulse. Shouldn’t be that simple, or?

Coming to the following conclusions:

• I am a sexist, despite all my efforts to not be one.
• sorry Thomas, I just don’t see it. It’s your thing, I know, THE Self, but still.
• all this amazing skill – hopefully the next Keystone Edition project will rock my socks off. This far into the text I probably need to write another, really positive article before I get invited to do a studio tour.

Further reading:

Die Radierung: Erfahrungen einer Kupferdruckerei
Henner Kätelhön
3rd revised Edition (1998)
ISBN: 978-3000039829

Die Radierung: Erfahrungen einer Kupferdruckerei
Sigfried Fuchs
earlier Edition (1972)

*edit:
see? http://lithoshop.tumblr.com/post/5018305311/vito-really-likes-litho-stones (go follow that guy, btw.)