Proceeds from this edition benefit the Summer 2018 exhibition at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College, The Conditions of being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. (1983-2004), examining the legacies of legendary art dealers Pat Hearn and Colin de Land.
Editions 1-10 to sell as part of the suite of prints; individual sales begin at edition 11.
This print by Philip Taaffe was made by the artist in his studio from his archive of linocut boards used in earlier paintings. How do we reference one of the world’s most spectacular, rarely seen and sublime experiences, the Aurora Borealis, using what amounts to miniaturized printmakers’ tools? Philip Taaffe’s distinct marks of the gouge and sharp patterned graphic shapes gives the viewer a taste of the spatial imaginary and the locus where one can imagine the extraordinary, all the while calling upon the limits of the imaginary when confronting a totalizing experience.
About the Artist
Philip Taaffe’s first solo exhibition was in New York in 1982. He has traveled widely in the Middle East, India, South America, and Morocco, where he collaborated with Mohammed Mrabet on the book Chocolate Creams and Dollars, translated by Paul Bowles (Inanout Press, New York: 1993). Taaffe lived and worked in Naples from 1988-91. He has been included in numerous museum exhibitions, including the Carnegie International, two Sydney Biennials, and three Whitney Biennials. In 1990 his work was the subject of an extensive critical study in Parkett no. 26 (Zurich & New York). In the year 2000, the IVAM museum in Valencia organized a retrospective survey of his work, with contributions by Enrique Juncosa, Robert Rosenblum, and Robert Creeley. In 2001 an extensive survey of his work was presented by the Galleria Civica of Trento, Italy (with texts by Vittoria Coen and Francesco Pellizzi). In 2004 the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in San Marino (Italy) presented a survey of paintings and drawings based on the artist’s explorations with floating pigments and the paper marbling process, accompanied by the Skira publication, Carte annuvolate (Cloud Papers) with essays by Peter Lamborn Wilson and John Yau. In 2008 the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg organized a retrospective survey, The Life of Forms in Art: Paintings 1980-2008, with a publication by Hatje Cantz, featuring contributions by Markus Brüderlin, Holger Broeker, Kay Heymer, and Brooks Adams.
