Past posts show you the finished prints. In this post I would like to talk about the process leading up to the show.
My artist and residency program at Viadukt started in April 2017. Viadukt is a cooperative screenprinting workshop on Gumpendorferstrasse 132, Vienna Austria. I am proud to call the beautiful women who run it my friends. I met Viadukt founder Bernadette Meisel & master printer Barbara Heiner in 2016 when I met my boyfriend Boicut and started cohabiting his studio a few doors away from the ladies' workshop.
Later that year Bernadette approched me with the opportunity to utilise the workshop to create a unique body of work in the context of their Artist & Residency programme. Needless to say I was massively grateful und flattered to have such faith invested in me. I had plenty of time to consider the possibilities and was pretty clear about my concept early on. It was subject matter that was already rattling my brain: Misappropriation of mundane consumer items, apathy and sexuality.
The series of 7 motifs is limited to 10 prints, excluding 4 Artist proofs and 4 Printer proofs. The format is 70x50 cm on Munkin Polar 400gsm. On average I produced 25 prints per series to get 10 "good" ones for sale and 8 for artist and printer proof.
Here is a direct link to the online shop.
Print process:
More colours in an artwork means higher risk when screen printing. Each colour is a layer i.e. print process you add to the paper. I went about this in a rather pedantic fashion, trying to minimise/eliminated the possibility of white flashing through the layers (blitzer). I'm not using any outlines which would usually be a sure way to mask any minor overlays or blitzer. I used halftones to create lighter shades of the same colour. The mesh allows you to expose very fine halftone onto the emulsified frame. Choosing the size of the halftone also achieves varying effects.
Sometimes I stayed in the workshop until ungodly hours of the morning correcting mistakes and mishaps in various print stages. I blew up my designs, turned them black, plotted them on transparent foil, emulsified frames, exposed the frames, mixed colours, cut my paper to format, printed, washed my frames, removed emulsion and repeat.
Showtime
The residency was almost three months long, ending in a solo show mid summer. I was adamant about displaying the prints alongside an interactive installation to keep visitors engaged in the space as long as possible, make them chuckle and bond over frivolities like children. I hacked together a 3-hole minigolf installation with a hint of sexual innuendo and a pat on the subject of the re-appropriation of ordinarily available material.
Here is a copy of the invitation that we printed in house.
*Some shots behind the scenes because I tend to like those a lot:
Full Disclosure
The origin of most of the artwork for this series is based on stills from real porn.
Stay safe
Bastardly yours,
Z