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 to begin at edition 11.
Philip Taaffe’s Siamese Leaves does little to hide the way in which the print was created. Spots of dried ink limit the contact of the paper with the matrix producing areas where ink was not picked up, and where one would expect to find negative space, we see generous markings from the print block itself. As much as Siamese Leaves might seem to be about the temporary and tangential joining of two leaves, we’re left to wonder if what we’re really seeing is evidence of the temporary pressured joining of the woodblock and the paper whereby the relief print has been produced.
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.
