Zane Bennett Contemporary Art returns with its second brick-and-mortar curatorial exhibition of 2019. The self-titled show features fine art prints by Ghanaian sculptor El Anatsui. Curated by Thomas Lollar and Paul Limperopulos, co-founders of the Benefit Print Project, with Zane Bennett Gallery Director Jordan Eddy, the exhibition is a triumph in innovative printmaking techniques.
Santa Fe, NM— “If you touch something, you leave a charge on it,” says El Anatsui. “And anybody else touching it connects with you, in a way.” Woven with recycled aluminum and copper wire, Anatsui's iconic garment-like sculptures subvert the notion that metal is a rigid material by manipulating it into pliable forms that arch and curve throughout their environment.
This motif extends to Anatsui’s printmaking. The stencils and pigment prints featured in
EL ANATSUI contour off the page—either physically curling upon themselves or creating trompe l'oeil dimensionality through patterns, shapes and pearlescent sheens. Some are printed on sheets of aluminium, while others feature hand-cut, hand-painted, or hand-woven elements that leave a charge of subversive invention straight from the artist’s hands.
Created in collaboration with the Benefit Print Project, this sophisticated series of prints utilizes new technologies. Co-founded by Thomas Lollar and Paul Limperopulos in 2010, it has published artists such as El Anatsui, Lynda Benglis, Shirin Neshat, and Mickalene Thomas.
Thomas W. Lollar is a scholar, arts administrator, and internationally recognized ceramist whose works are in numerous collections, including the Smithsonian National Design Museum. As director of the Visual Arts at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, and under the auspices of the Bera Lister Poster and Print Program, Lollar oversaw the publication of editions in prints by artists including Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, and Tom Wesselmann. Lollar is an instructor in the Department of Arts & Humanities at Teachers College - Columbia University.
Paul Limperopulos was assistant director of the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers University. Before his appointment at Rutgers, Limperopulos was a curator at the Visual Arts at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Under the auspices of the Vera List Poster and Print Program at Lincoln Center, Limperopulos commissioned Sharon Core, Karen Kilimnik, and Marilyn Minter to create special projects for the center's 50th anniversary. Limperopulos is on the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences at New York Institute of Technology, where he teaches in the departments of Interdisciplinary Studies and Philosophy and Ethics.
