Krakow Witkin Gallery | ANNI ALBERS, BERYL KOROT, BRICE MARDEN; Woven | Boston | June 11 – July 29
Beryl Korot, Weaver’s Notation – Variation 1, 2012, digital embroidery and inkjet on photo rag paper, edition of 6, 22 1/4 x 22 1/4 inches framed (56.5 x 56.5 cm) 
Brice Marden #8 2012 Etching with aquatint and scraping on Somerset paper with deckled edge 
Anni Albers Do IV 1973 Screenprint Edition of 50 Image size: 19 x 19 inches (48.3 x 48.3 cm)
June 11 – July 29, 2022
ANNI ALBERS, BERYL KOROT, BRICE MARDEN | Woven
Krakow Witkin Gallery
In-Person Viewing:
10 Newbury Street, Boston, Massachusetts 02116, USA
Virtual Viewing:
https://www.krakowwitkingallery.com/exhibitions/woven/
The works exhibited at Krakow Witkin Gallery are Beryl Korot’s “Weavers Notations Variation 1” and “Weavers Notations Variation 2”, both from 2012. They derive from original hand-drawn weaver’s notations that the artist made in 1976 for “Text and Commentary” (a project first exhibited in 1977 at Leo Castelli Gallery and, in 2015, acquired by the Museum of Modern Art, New York). For these newer works, Korot imported the source drawings/notations into a computer, altered them and then outputted them as inkjet prints on archival paper. Furthermore, working with Judith Solodkin, a master printer and an expert in digital embroidery, Korot selected specific thread structures to be digitized and then chose particular threads to be sewn into the inkjet prints in specific ways to create different levels of transparency in relationship to the printed imagery that they were ‘covering’. The programmed structure of the threads allows the printed markings to be seen in a new way, adding texture, color, and depth to the surface of the work. The kind of stitching, its shape, and degrees of being open or closed to the drawn surface beneath challenges a viewer’s experience, creating opportunities for deeper looking at and exploration of the intersections of the imagery, the printing and embroidery, with digital, organic, original, and reproductive all being considered equally important.
Since 1961 when a student at Boston University, Brice Marden has worked with etching. He has utilized line etching, sugarlift, aquatint and a myriad of other techniques. The two works by Marden included in “Woven” were made twenty years apart (1992 and 2012) and while there is a strong change within the overall structure of marks, a consistency reigns. The process of making a print – wiping, scraping, acid-etching, etc. as well as deciding how big and what paper to print upon – are all used by Marden to create a dynamic, sensitive, and quiet situation for contemplation. Simultaneous to this, he shows that the power of all the marks comes from their contingency to other marks. Compare, contrast, push, pull, and support are just some of the formal actions that Marden’s lines, planes and spaces do to and with each other.
Anni Albers started making prints in 1963. By 1973, she was well versed in the techniques, limitations and opportunities of the various processes. “Do IV” displays Albers’ command of screenprinting as the work displays her creativity and skill balancing between the surface plane of the paper with the dynamic “micro-planes” that make up the pattern. She printed single large square of color to delineate the visual space in the center of the paper. A huge quantity of small marks are arranged so as to create a large number of rhomboids. These rhomboids abut, intersect, and spread out so as to create both four neatly arranged squares as well as a central diamond. The small marks are darker and lighter in various locations so as to give one’s eye the sense of receding or projecting into space, all the while, the whole work is seemingly a flat pattern. As was typical for Albers, the work displays her ability to simultaneously present senses of delicacy, dynamism, stability, and strength.
