Fall 2023 Exhibitions

Where do I start? is a comprehensive exhibition of monoprints and sculpture by Brooklyn-based Raque Ford (she/her). This is her first institutional solo show and the first to highlight the artist’s innovative print works, showing her capacity to think about print in multiple dimensions.

Ford's prints and sculptures feature geometric forms, text and symbols that reveal how identity is crafted from scraps of popular culture. She juxtaposes icons of pop feminism, including peace signs, flowers, cherries and references to Beyoncé, with expressionistic gestures. Ford’s exploration of language is evident in the lines of text physically cut into the sculptures and layered in the prints. These snippets, culled from her own poetry and diaries, along with found texts, make reference to her experiences as a Black woman.

All of Ford’s monoprints were made at the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York. In 2018, Ford enjoyed a fellowship there, designed to immerse artists in the world of printmaking which led to an ongoing collaboration with the studio’s master printer Justin Sanz. Ford’s growing interest in exploring the potential of printmaking is revealed in her creation of increasingly layered images and the use of more complex techniques, such as the addition of the drypoint etching process, which requires handincising and selective inking.

The exhibition's sculptures – both mounted on the wall and suspended from the ceiling – are made from various materials and colors of Plexiglas. Ford is drawn to the visual dynamism of the colorful acrylic to which she applies non-traditional marks such as the scuff of shoes made by dancing on it, or which she manipulates by cutting with a jigsaw to clear away space for lines of poetry or decorative elements. The sheets of Plexiglas are continually repurposed: moving from the floor to the wall, and from being the substrate (or matrix) from which to pull a print, into the actual artwork itself

All images provided are courtesy of the Artist and Greene Naftali, New York. Photos: Zeshan Ahmed.

Kat Richards’ (they/them) Shapes of Change presents large-scale, flamboyant monoprints of uncanny forms saturated with color, including three new prints made for this exhibition. The works serve as metaphors for an ever-changing human body and the solace we find in ritual. The work represents a fundamental aspect of the former Philadelphia-based artist’s ongoing exploration into the boundlessness of gender and queerness.

Some of Richards’ monoprints employ shape as metaphor for an ever-changing corporeal figure. The artist reconfigures the same shape to multiple ends; a form that suggests a leg or mouth can also represent a finger, nipple or foliage. In others, the abstract forms reference Richards’ experiences as a self-described Trans-Queer person, commemorating moments of celebration and recognizing these moments as inextricable from those of solemnity.

Richards utilizes a variety of techniques and tools from Photoshop, stenciling, rainbow rolls and handcutting to superimpose a digital visual language onto analog images. Their showcasing of distinctive color gradients retains the slight imperfections inevitable in handwork. Richards sees their use of print processes as an extension of their queerness, gender and body, analogizing the printing press as a theoretical, genderless prosthetic for reproduction, replacing the anatomical with its mechanical means. 

My work is about queering the body, investigating new possibilities and different realities. Through a monoprint stencil technique, I reimagine the body by conceptualizing it in parts, using an index of abstract, fragmented shapes.

– Kat Richards

All images provided are courtesy of the Artist.