Artists: Shana Agid, Elizabeth Blomster, Tova Carlin, Hope Dector, Amy Kao, Ruth Lauer Manenti, Ryan McGinness, Felix Plaza, Linda Plotkin, Liz Zanis

Four exhibitions are held annually with invited guest curators, who select the work from submissions by current residency participants. Bruce Pearson was the Mystery Benefit artist for the Printshop in 2005. Pearson, based in Brooklyn, New York, and represented by Ronald Feldman Gallery, works in abstraction informed by current and historical references, that connects to a portion of the artists in this exhibition. For instance, Ryan McGinness’s three unique screenprints from the series Untitled (Multi-colored Barbed Wire on White) printed on translucent Japanese paper are a combination of abstraction with figurative components that subtly allude to current social issues.

Works such as Ruth Lauer Manenti and Shana Agid address socio-political issues more directly. Manenti was so moved by a young girl pictured in a New York Times article that she dedicated After her high school was bombed she said she “couldn’t even kill a bird,” and several other works to her and her chilling quote. Shana Agid’s screenprint, The disappearance of Phillip De Vine, addresses the case of three deaths in Nebraska, December 1993. Brandon Teena became a symbol of anti-transgender violence, immortalized in the movie, “Boys Don’t Cry”, whilst Phillip De Vine became invisible, written out of the movie and not acknowledged in its credits.

Felix Plaza’s screenprint, La Guerra no es civil – utopia, is semi-autobiographical, the figure made up of images from his native Puerto Rico combined with elements from the Taino culture, the original inhabitants of the country before the Spaniards conquered. Amy Kao integrates looping, interlocking forms with her reduction linocuts, Linda Plotkin’s colorful monotypes and Elizabeth Blomster’s playful cut-outs are more formal representations of abstraction using color, line and form. Hope Dector’s abstract line etchings are part of a series of 10 works involving varying arrangements of computer boards and micro-chips that reference the interplay between the digital and the mechanical mode of reproduction. Liz Zanis utilizes the medium of print in an innovative fashion, creating miniature balsawood sculptures that offer minute and tempting surprises in them.

Guest-curated by Bruce Pearson