+ Currency Part 1 - University of Alabama at Birmingham

Jürgen Tarrasch
Currency Part 1:
Modes of Expression
Artifacts

Currency Part 1:
Modes of Expression
curated by Derek Cracco and Brett Levine

Introduction
Currency Part 1: Modes of Expression and Currency Part 2: Means of Exchange are exhibitions
driven by a spirit of collaboration and the desire to critically interrogate contemporary printmaking
practices, To give credit where it is due, the initial impetus for the exhibition came from Professor
Derek Cracco at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His commitment to contemporary
printmaking and his belief that we had an obligation to explore these practices led to the two
projects that comprise the series.
Currency Part 1: Modes of Expression is positioned by both abstraction and the interrogation of
media. Currency Part 2: Means of Exchange, which will be explored in a separate publication,
considers the roles that contemporary print practices have in mediating our expriences of the
world through the examination and interpretation of currency itself.
These exhibitions highlight our commitment to the UAB Visual Arts Gallery and Artlab’s ongoing
focus on contemporary practices that have the potential to change the ways we look at the world,.
Brett Levine
Director, Artlab/The Visual Arts Gallery

The Simplicity of Multiplicity
by Brett M. Levine
Printmaking’s complexity, as well as its simplicity, lies is its multiplicity. The
capacity for seriality and repetition places printmaking in a class of artistic
practices that sits uneasily within the fine arts precisely because of this capacity.
The idea of repetition being an anathema to fine arts is as common a statement as
is Walter Benjamin’s observations on the aura, authenticity and originality.
I begin here because the two exhibitions that form the season of Currency are
framed not by this idea, but instead by a framework that is both far simpler, and
perhaps more complex at the same time.

Currency Part 1: Modes of Expression is, in many ways, a very traditional
exhibition. It contains the largest collection of contemporary print works made
with traditional media that has ever been exhibited at Artlab. And, in many
ways, this observation was initially an impediment. My reservations stemmed
in part from my own inability to critically position printmaking as a contemporary
discursive practice, a reservation that was dispelled by my conversations with
professor and printmaker Derek Cracco. My reticence was exacerbated by what
I perceived as printmaking’s emphasis on technique – something that while not
unimportant, was not and still is not my primary criterion for evaluating a work of
art. Here is a contemporary dilemma, one in which I perceived that the value of

a work could not be derived from its medium or methodology, but was instead
wholly dependent on its concept.
I believe this belief, which I acknowledge can border on a prejudice, stems in part
from the historicity that accompanies so much printmaking today. It is difficult,
for example, not to consider the practices of printmaking as falling somehow
outside the fine arts realm. Consider, for example, an exhibition from the early
1990s that appeared in London, Philadelphia, and Canberra, Australia. It’s title?
Lasting Impressions: Lithography as Art. The title implies, by necessity, that
maybe lithography (and by extension every other print medium), might somehow
not really be art – it might be a commercial practice, or a practice so trapped in

its industrial/commercial applications that whatever it was it would never scale the
heights of the true fine arts – painting, sculpture and architecture, of course.
We know, of course, that this is not the case. We accept that the print medium
has not only expanded our experiences of art, but that it has also opened its
market. We see the screenprints of Andy Warhol, the transfer prints of Roy
Lichtenstein, and the etchings of Kiki Smith as works that assert the primacy and
the possibility of modern and contemporary printmaking.
I begin here because it is from this framework that Currency Part 1: Modes of
Expression was conceived. When Derek Cracco first posited the idea, it was

framed in the ways I have outlined above. I believed that there was duplicity in
the concept much as there was duplicity in the idea of printmaking itself. It seems
self-evident that the very process of printmaking, the creation of a copy without
an original, creates something that is unique and universal in precisely the same
instant.
What follows, then, is an exhibition that explores the notion that printmaking stands
as a trope for the contemporary creative practice. One could read the media
themselves as being subject to a single question, which became “What does it
mean to express an idea through the practice of a printmaking medium today?”
What is, and what do we mean, when we speak of its mode of expression?

The six artists in Currency Part 1: Modes of Expression, each have an individual
approach to a medium and a methodology. Five of the six artists are represented
through their emphasis on abstraction, while the sixth explores a terrain
somewhere outside pure abstraction itself.
Consider, initially, the three works by Polly Apfelbaum. Each is a lithograph, a
work made possible by the natural opposition of oil and water and the capacity
this creates for binding ink to a plate. Apfelbaum’s iconography is both simple
and familiar. She began drawing and printing flowers almost twenty years
ago, initially by simply sketching some of Warhol’s flowers. This unexpected

appropriation stands as indicative of printmaking itself. Apfelbaum subtly
appropriated and altered one of history’s grand appropriators, recontextualizing
the imagery to be delicate and intimate. The flower, as a flat block of unified color,
stands as a symbol for nature far more than it actually represents nature itself.
Rainbow Love, Mountain Ranch, New Mexico is a twelve-color lithograph that
arrays itself vertically in terms of color but horizontally iconographically. Her flower
theme, a consistent element in her works for over twenty years, provides a constant
yet ever changing element that can serve to unify her works. In When Opposites
Attract we see two approaches to the monochrome representation of a unified
subject. On the left, we see what we might regard as the gesture, while on the right
we find her marks reduced to the flat blocks of color that appear in other works.

These latter icons are, in a sense, more indicative of the modernity of printmaking,
while the former refer to its history.
Artist Laura Berman’s works from both her Gridrocks and her Rockpiles series
consider the relationships between the form and pattern of nature and the essential
flatness of printmaking. Writing on the Gridrocks, a series of relief monoprints,
Berman has observed that the works are inspired by both the permanence and
whimsy that cohabitate in her rock collection. Formally, the pieces are ambiguous,
a series of organically shaped, multicolored shapes arrayed across a sheet of paper.
Berman’s monoprints are the only ones in the exhibition. Perhaps the single most
challenging element of these pieces is that in representing the rocks Berman’s

eductions make their lineages more hidden. The idea of the rock as a subject
creates an automatic dichotomy, one between the beauty of nature (where the rock
signifies both groundedness and permanence), and the shortsightedness of the
narrow minded (in which someone might be ‘dumb as a box of rocks’).
Carl Fudge’s screenprints combine aspects of historical art, contemporary
technology, and traditional printmaking techniques to create works that refuse to be
historicist while at the same time being historical. The significance of these works
lies not in our capacity to recognize their source material, as it is not about whether
or not we can locate the pieces comfortably. Instead, Fudge’s transformation of
the source material into a series of pieces, which are represented by variables –x,

y and z –, means that the works themselves become both singular and universal.
Our expectation, or even Fudge’s assertion that the pieces actually have a historical
framework hinges on our complicity in believing this to be the case. What is most
challenging, and therefore most unexpected, is that screenprinting has so often
been used as a medium of pop and post-pop reduction, something suited for both
Warholian excess and garage band success.
More unexpectedly, Fudge’s nomenclature creates a kind of expectation that the
works themselves have identifiable sources. A brief search suggests antecedents
might be Lazlo Moholy-Nagy’s Komposition Z, or although seemingly less likely,
Wassily Kandinsky’s Komposition X. Fudge’s abstractions become complex studies

in pattern and repetition, multilayered works that obscure their primary sources and
become something more than pure abstraction at the same time.
Kevin Haas’ Inventory series shares much with Klingberg’s Brand New View.
The most representative of the works in the exhibition, Haas has still distilled
his iconography to its simplest elements. The black silhouettes highlight the
unexpected subtleties of design, and the works represent objects that are
traditionally found at human scale. Haas’ focus on traditional printmaking
techniques highlights the absolute banality of the subjects themselves. The works,
intaglios on paper, capture subjects that would not seem to merit such complex
treatments. In this disparity, Haas distills one of the focus areas of contemporary

printmaking to its simplest elements. Whereas historically printmaking allowed
members of a social structure to assert status and power, contemporary
printmakers use complex techniques to represent quotidian objects. For
Currency Part 1, Haas’ nine-piece grid of objects from the everyday world almost
creates a taxonomy of the overlooked. Like Klingberg, the capacity of the banal
becomes the celebration of unexpected beauty.
At first, both the beauty and the seemingly obsessive qualities of creation inherent
in Karla Hackenmiller’s works are not necessarily apparent. Liminal Collision, an
etching and spit bite aquatint, is a delicate abstraction with threads etched across
the plate. The Liminal Slices combine etching and collage, adding an unexpected

texture to our expectations of the print. This unexpectedness is represented
through the collision and passage of information across the ground, much as the
way in which the idea of the liminal and liminality address the space one inhabits
between two states – between conscious and unconscious, or between asleep and
awake. Hackenmiller uses traditional methods to represent universal experiences
that are more often illustrated through the moving image.
Gunilla Klingberg’s Brand New View is the least traditional print work in Currency
Part 1, at least to the extent that it lacks a traditional ground. Her large-scale,
site-specific works turn mundane corporate identities and well-known corporate
brands into large-scale rosettes or mandalas, icons for a new view of the corporate

age. For Brand New View, she hybridizes American and international corporations,
familiar brands like Wal-Mart or Target. The former’s oft-overlooked star becomes
a repetitive signifier of success and glamour, while the latter’s ubiquitous target
icon serves to create dynamism and movement. Kmart’s oversized K becomes
transformed into something suggesting the Indian subcontinent, while the
Northeastern supermarket chain Shoprite makes an appearance with its former
logo, still in use at some locations. Klingberg’s installation makes the banal
become beautiful, as the texts and embellishments become transformed into
patterns suggestive of a higher value. One need only walk a short distance to
the stained glass rosette window on the UAB campus to see an antecedent that
is both transformed and skewered by Klingberg’s repurposing of such iconic

logos. The vinyl serves to stand as one of the most contemporary approaches
to printmaking. Its capacity for boundless design and endless identical
representation means that it shares the process of printmaking at least as closely
as it strays from printmaking’s traditional media.
For now, Currency Part 1: Modes of Expression serves as a tentative step
towards reconsidering and recontextualizing contemporary printmaking. It
seeks to work at the edges, to question the roles of traditional media as mark
making methods in the modern world. Obviously each artist is committed to the
potentials that traditional mark making provides in the printmaking context. But
rather than be constrained by media, these artists take control of both the media

and their histories to assert new ways of using well-understood tools.
Perhaps each of these artists explores a duality that might not have readily been
apparent. Fudge and Klingberg explore the intersections of technology and
tradition. Berman and Apfelbaum sit on the edges of nature and process. Kevin
Haas uses the contemporary world as a means of abstraction, and printmaking
as its method. And Karla Hackenmiller allows the spaces of transition, the liminal
spaces, to be both reflected upon and represented through both her process and
content.
Clearly contemporary printmaking allows us to process this ongoing process,

that of thinking historically without historicizing it. Printmaking may be the
most ubiquitous artform we encounter each day. Perhaps it is more pervasive
than photography. In any event, it is time to rescue it from its consignment to
history, and to understand that tradition and traditional are not the same thing.
Instead, printmaking has a currency as a mode of expression that is defining our
understandings of the world and its expression today.

List of Works
p.2: Kevin Haas, from the Inventory series, Intaglio on Paper, courtesy of the artistp 4: Polly Apfelbaum, When
Opposites Attract, One Color Lithograph, courtesy the artist and Tamarind Institute
p 6: Polly Apfelbaum, Rainbow Liove, Mountain Ranch, New Mexico, Twelve Color Lithograph, courtesy the
artist and Tamarind Institute
p 8: Polly Apfelbaum, Flower Patch, Two Color Lithograph, courtesy the artist and Tamarind Institute
p 10: Laura Berman, Rockpiles 2 (1), Monoprint, courtesy of the artist
p 12: Laura Berman, Rockpiles 2 (10), Monoprint, courtesy of the artist
p 14: Laura Berman, Gridrocks #16, Monoprint, courtesy of the artist
p 16: Carl Fudge, Komposition Y, Three Color Screenprint, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New
York
p 18: Carl Fudge, Komposition Z, Three Color Screenprint, courtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery,
New York
p 20: Kevin Haas, Inventory: Shopping Cart, Intaglio on Paper, courtesy of the artist
p 22: Kevin Haas, Inventory: Generator with Lights, Intaglio on Paper, courtesy of the artist
p 24: Kevin Haas, Inventory: Caution, Intaglio on Paper, courtesy of the artist
p 26: Karla Hackenmiller, Liminal Collision, Etching and Spit Bite Aquatint, courtesy of the artist
p 28: Karla Hackenmiller, Liminal Fracture #14, Etching and Collage, courtesy of the artist
p 30: Karla Hackenmiller, Liminal Strip, Etching and Collage, courtesy of the artist
p 32: Gunilla Klingberg, Brand New View, Digital cut vinyl, courtesy the artist and Gallery Nordenhake
p 34: Gunilla Klingberg, Installation View, Cosmic Matter, courtesy the artist and Gallery Nordenhake
p 36: Gunilla Klingberg, Installation View, Mantric Mutation, courtesy the artist and Gallery Nordenhake
Cover: Karla Hackenmiller, Liminal Collision (detail), courtesy of the artist

This exhibition would not have been possible without the assistance of many people who generously contrributed
their time and expertise. We would like to thank:
The Artists
Bo Hughins
Cheryl Lewis
Marco Nocella, Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York
Arif Khan, Curator, The Tamarind Institute, University of New Mexico
Denny Frank, Birmingham Museum of Art
Rashid Qandil, Birmingham Museum of Art
Alan Skees
John Butler
Atelier 4, New York
Evelee Long
Gallery Nordenhake, Stockholm/Berlin

Currency Part 1: Modes of Expression, and Currency Part 2: Means of Exchange, are initiatives
of Artlab, a project of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Artlab/The Visual Arts Gallery is
committed to presenting project based works that extend our capacity to understand the scope of
contemporary art. Artlab focuses on installation, time-based media, sound, new media and related
practices.
This publication accompanies the project Currency Part 1: Modes of Expression,
January 6 - February 11, 2011
Artlab/The Visual Arts Gallery is funded in part by student services fees through the UAB Cultural
Activities Committee.
All images © the artists.
Catalogue design, essay and text © Brett M. Levine