Crown Point Press announces its annual group exhibition, Summer Choices: The Joy of Discovery, which presents a collection of prints emphasizing the lighthearted feeling of the summer season. During these challenging times, art reminds us that we are together in our desire to be inspired by joy. Although the prints in this exhibition broadly differ in technique and concept, they share underlying themes of beauty, curiosity, happiness, and light. Summer Choices highlights a diverse group of twenty-one artists including Anne Appleby, William Bailey, John Cage, Leonardo Drew, Eric Fischl, Robert Kushner, Sherrie Levine, Tom Marioni, Susan Middleton, Dorothy Napangardi, Chris Ofili, Gay Outlaw, Laura Owens, Markus Raetz, Ed Ruscha, Wilson Shieh, Shahzia Sikander, Pat Steir, Patricia Treib, Richard Tuttle, and John Zurier. We invite you to discover the connections for yourself. The exhibition is on view in the Crown Point Gallery from July 31 through September 7.
“The dynamic for me was not just that I wanted to make fresh prints, but also I wanted the experience to be all new, and all about discovery, and that meant working with a subject that was new to me but has some history,” Chris Ofili said in the Summer 2009 edition of Overview. The British painter first visited the Crown Point studio in 2008 and completed eighteen prints, including the jewel-toned series Rainbow, featured in the exhibition. It is a set of twelve small prints that represent the vibrant life in Trinidad, the Caribbean island Ofili moved to in 2005. Trinidad has since become an integral part of his work; memories of exploring the island’s waterfalls and caves by kayak inspired his first etching project. Using spit bite aquatint and colorful gampi paper, he illustrated cascading falls, leafy palms, and figures bathing in the water.
Also on view is Pat Steir’s print Kweilin Dreaming #52, which takes us on a voyage through Guilin, a town in China known for its ethereal mountain range and river. She encountered the stunning landscape in 1989 on a side trip during Crown Point's China woodblock program. The goal of the woodblock program was for artists to learn a new medium in the realm of printmaking and gain new perspectives in an unfamiliar location. Steir's Kweilin Dreaming #52 is one in a series of 89 woodblock prints with hand-painting. Her distinct mark-making deconstructs the landscape to abstraction, with the words “China” and “moon” written out as a literal reference to her inspiration.
Leonardo Drew’s CPP4, featured above and included in the exhibition, is one of the eleven prints he made during his time in the Crown Point studio in 2015. The New York-based artist is known for his massive sculptures created with natural materials that are reflective of time, existence, and heritage. While at Crown Point, Drew didn’t hesitate to investigate different etching techniques; he made several prints with an unusual mix of raw egg whites and gum arabic to transform the rosin-coated copper plate. As the egg whites dried, the rosin ground cracked in an unpredictable manner, like mud cracking on the desert floor. Drew’s experiment yielded a new design with every print, revealing beauty in the unexpected.
Summer Choices: The Joy of Discovery is on view in the Crown Point Gallery at 20 Hawthorne Street, San Francisco, July 31 – September 7, 2020. Crown Point Press is committed to limiting the spread of COVID-19 and keeping our staff and clients healthy. We are welcoming one-party visits to the gallery by appointment only. Please phone us at (415) 974-6273 or send an email to Valerie Wade to set up a time. Our new summer hours are Monday-Friday, 9AM-5PM.
