A selection of Matrices

September 21–January 12, 2017

Located at 1600 Smith in Houston, Tx.

The desire of duplicating images is thousands of years old, dating to the Sumerians who engraved inscriptions and designs on cylinder seals to formalize inventory, transactions, and important information. Between 764 and 770, Buddhist charms were rubbed from blocks and printed in Japan. Centuries ago playing cards, religious studies, as well as sensual and purely decorative images were printed from metal plates and wooden blocks created by the artist, often in book form to illustrate and enhance the written word. The common thread was the desire for multiple images.

In this digital age of refined and effective reproduction and the resounding proliferation of imagery, the hand of the artist can become a secondary instrument. A cautionary suggestion: the printed photograph of an image is not the work itself. As Walter Benjamin wrote in 1936 in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.….that which withers in the age of mechanical reproduction is the aura of the work of art.

The art of fine printmaking lies in the hands of the artist, incising the copper plate, carving the wood block, preparing a screen for the transfer of an image, an image created by the artist. It also can be a profound collaboration between the artist and a highly knowledgeable and creative printmaker, one who understands the intricacies and the innuendos of paper, ink, the refinement of line of the etching needle as well as saturation of ink into the powerful cut of a block of wood. It is a collaboration of experimentation and experience, testing the pressure of a press, understanding the strength of a particular metal plate and accurately predicting the layering of color, choosing the perfect paper for the medium of transfer. A print can be pulled by the artist in the solitary enclosure of a studio. And a print can be the result of the creative experiences of a master printer, the studio assistants, and the necessary interaction and hands on involvement of the artist.  And we find, although we have multiple images, each print is unique, for the pressure of the press, the wiping of the plate, the delicacy of the screen instructs the resulting image to be its own. It is there we find the aura of the work itself.

Curated by Sally Reynolds

In cooperation with the Artists, Flatbed Press, Austin, The Printing Museum, Houston, and Devin Borden Gallery, Houston

Works by Terry Allen, Dan Allison, Josh Bernstein, John Robert Craft, Charles Criner, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Luis Jimenez, Jules Buck Jones, Sharon Kopriva, R. W. Kubach, Mary McCleary, Dan Rizzie, Armando Rodriguez, Camila Ruiz, Elizabeth Montgomery Shelton, Julie Speed, James Surls, Frank X Tolbert 2, Liz Ward, and David J. Webb

Photographs by Dawn Baxter