Bad Editions

Throughout history, printmaking processes have been used to reproduce and disseminate ideas by way of books, pamphlets, posters, and even playing cards.  Printmaking is a rigorous discipline that demands a set of strategies that will result in the creation of a matrix, which is then used to recreate--as identically as possible--the same image multiple times.  Within contemporary art practice, the boundaries that once defined printmaking as a utilitarian reproductive technique have been experimented with, enhanced, modified, and sometimes even exterminated.  Interdisciplinary methods of art-making have created collaborations between mark-making, material, surface, and concept that beg the question: what is a print?

In Bad Editions, a series of artists explore the possibilities of printmaking as a process, as a philosophy, and as an excuse for art-making.  By incorporating strategies that deviate from tradition—turning a chair seat into a woodcut, using a pigskin instead of a copper plate, or altering existing mass media print materials—the artists in this exhibition challenge printmaking to define itself broadly. These artists take traditional methodologies as a point of departure to question the limits of the print, the role of the edition, and how printmaking techniques might inform other disciplines.

Bad Editions Curatorial Essay 

Participating Artists: