Patrick Merrill
Curator's Statement continued
A printmaking organization in Southern California a few years back called themselves Multiple Originals. The name spoke to who they were as artists as well as an essential component of their chosen medium. The application of numbering and limiting a print's edition is a modern creation, one driven by a market that created value through scarcity. The obsession for identical repeatability is also a function of market, one driven by commercial demand. Each print is original. Its value does not lie in its scarcity but in the image itself. Because of a serendipitous accident this exhibit has three versions of a collograph print by Belkis Ayon. Often artists will hand over the production of an edition to a masterprinter but Belkis Ayon always printed her own art. Look at these prints carefully and you will see the artist's hand in the choices she made, the subtle differences that reveal just how original each print is. Carl Beam employs the repeatability aspect of printmaking as a conceptual tool. He repeats common motifs in differing contexts, asking us to discern the shifting shades of meaning in the same way common words shift to deeper meanings when re-presented through poetry.
For Ral Veroni original/copy is a non-issue. We never say a ten-dollar bill is the same as another. Its value, its uniqueness is in its exchange potential. His screen prints, primarily on Argentine currency, play with this exchange. Currency devalued to zero by inflation and therefore homogenized to a uniform sameness is revalued by art and once again becomes unique.