McKenzie Fine Art: Ann Aspinwall Exhibition

55 Orchard Street, New York, New York 10002 212 989 5467 fax 212 989 5642


	Ann Aspinwall: Spirit of Place June 14 - July 14, 2019
	Ann Aspinwall: Spirit of Place is an exhibition of the artist’s recent work in silkscreen, etching, linocut, and collagraph. Limiting herself to the minimal elements of undulating parallel lines and a few carefully selected colors, Aspinwall creates luminous expanses that are suggestive of landscape, water, and sky. Ann Aspinwall: Spirit of Place features several new works created specifically for this exhibition, including Ray I–III, 2019, a vibrant large-scale series of editioned prints; Twine, 2018, and Ray (Aqua, Peridot, Citrine, and Copper), 2019, two series of unique hand-colored linocuts. Other works include Spumante, 2017, and Ambra, 2018, immense linocuts measuring nearly five feet in width. While Spumante and Ambra are printed from the same matrix, their different color schemes produce dramatically distinct effects. Tessuto Veneziano, 2010—an elegant and intimate suite of five diptychs created with etching and chine collé—illustrates the origins of Aspinwall’s fascination with lines and color, and harkens back to her time spent apprenticing in a print studio in Venice in the late 1990s. About Tessuto Veneziano, Aspinwall wrote, “I adhered to a certain principle. I drew one freehand line as straight as possible. Under that line I drew another, following as closely as I could to the one above it. Each successive line followed the line directly above, imitating all its curves and shakes. These imperfections, or deviations from the original line, became more and more prominent, each line an interpretation of what came before.” While Aspinwall’s works have continued to stem from that practice, they have evolved significantly: the scale has increased, the lines have loosened, and the colors have become much bolder. Aspinwall recognized the potential in this method for evoking the topographical features of an imagined terrain. She achieves optical effects of highlights, shadows, depth, and movement through variations of line density and her meticulous choice of colors. Aspinwall works primarily in print mediums because they afford her a means of realizing the quality of line and saturation of color that are essential to her work. She also takes advantage of the capacity for multiple impressions by using her matrix over and over to print color variations of the same composition, rendering impressions of different times of day or season. Ann Aspinwall: Spirit of Place is presented in collaboration with Garvey\|Simon, New York.