521W26

Works Printed by Maurice Payne

 – , 2011

 

Pace Prints Chelsea is pleased to present an exhibition of works printed by Maurice Payne between 1989 and 2007. Works by Mel Bochner, Eric Fischl, William Kentridge, Humphrey Ocean, David Salle, Colin Self, Joel Shapiro, Richard Smith and Donald Sultan will be on view and show the many different applications of Payne’s collaborations in etching, aquatint and engraving.

Maurice Payne began his career printing at famed English studio Petersburg Press in the 1960s. Since then, he has created long lasting relationships working with artists, such as David Hockney and Jim Dine. Payne’s innovative techniques in the printmaking medium, specifically in carborundum collograph and intaglio techniques, pushed many artists to experiment and broaden their work in print.

One of the more notable experiments which resulted in a key work from the 1980s in Jasper John’s print oeuvre was documented in Seven Master Printmakers: Innovations in the Eighties by Riva Castleman. She notes, “In 1989 the printer Maurice Payne suggested to Johns that he might like to try a method of printmaking that, like monotype, could be made by painting with a brush. The Carborundum technique allowed the artist to paint with a mixture of Carborundum granules in a liquid medium that would adhere to a plate and solidify. Various sizes of the granules provided differing degrees of roughness on the plate which trapped more or less ink….The grainy surface of the Untitled 1989 print presents an effect close to a charcoal drawing. However, only Johns’s brushwork in painting shares the looseness of the line that was encouraged by the medium. Producing a uniform edition was impossible because ink tended to adhere to the grains in more than one direction, depending upon how the plate was wiped, and thereby print darker or with uneven tonalities. Notwithstanding the technical burden, this print presents one of Johns’s most ambiguous images of the 1980s in the form of a classical altarpiece.”

Maurice Payne has worked with Howard Hodgkin, Jasper Johns, Eric Fischl, Mel Bochner, Jim Dine, Joel Shapiro, William Kentridge and David Hockney, since the 1970s. Payne is a master of the medium, in the vein of Aldo Crommelynck.

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