Filed under: DC, Review | Tags: Annie Albagli, Brian Chippendale, Greg Cook, Julie Chae, Jungil Hong, Kayrock, Kris Chatterson, Kristina Bilonick, Matthew Smith, Vince Contarino
Brian Chippendale came to prominence as a leading figure in the underground art and music scene that blossomed in Providence, RI during the 1990s. At the center of this creative explosion was Fort Thunder, an expansive live-work space co-founded by Chippendale in 1995 that occupied the second floor of an historic mill. Part performance space, part printshop, part residence, Fort Thunder was ultimately purchased by a developer and demolished in 2002, giving way to a supermarket and office supply store. As Chippendale bounced around studios over the next couple of years he went from decorating his walls with prints of his drawings to stretching them over wooden bars like paintings. As he told Greg Cook in a profile for Juxtapoz last June: “I think I got so wound up by the Fort Thunder thing that I couldn’t start fastening them to the walls. It seemed like a good way to make things I could move around. Plus, the walls were concrete, and I couldn’t really staple to them.”
Brian Chippendale | The High Castle | 2011, screenprint collage on wood, 58”x48” (image courtesy of the artist and Arlington Arts Center)
A few of these wall pieces, along with works by 27 other artists, are currently on display in CTRL+P (on view through September 16), an expansive group show co-curated by Kristina Bilonick and Julie Chae at Arlington Arts Center. The show explores new and multidisciplinary directions in printmaking, including painterly treatments like Brian Chippendale’s “stretched paper” pieces and a myriad other approaches. After the jump I look at a few of the more painterly works and I consider how they arrived at this junction between painting and printmaking. –Matthew Smith, Washington, D.C. contributor
