A new exhibit featuring a full range of printmaking from contemporary artists Peik and Judith Larsen opened in Milton’s Nesto Gallery on Tuesday, February 12. Through the work of these two artists, the show addresses the confluences of etching and digital imagery, demonstrating the range and interrelationship of both processes. An opening reception was held on Tuesday evening in the Nesto Gallery to kick off the month-long exhibit.
Peik Larsen’s work utilizes both the old and the new to explore the expressive potential of light, visual relationships and the immediacy of material. He exhibits a wide range of traditional printmaking techniques and expands that repertoire by incorporating many current digital processes. The computer allows Peik to digitally expand the scale of a print, output the images onto transparencies for photo etching, view the evolutionary phases of a single worked plate over time, and reproduce monotypes and watercolors on traditional printmaking papers. The innovative possibilities have become an integral part of Peik’s working process.
Judith Larsen’s digitally rendered photographs record the projections of images and diagrams from the history of art and science onto the blank canvas of the human body. This work that involves capturing dimly lit bodies in motion could not exist without the advent of ultra light-sensitive digital photography. Judith utilizes the etching process to further explore the expressive potential of the diagrams by etching them deeply into zinc plates and then transferring that imprint and its embossment back onto the figure. She also infuses some of her bodies with appropriated etchings from the history of art and science. The print becomes an expression of our deep cultural imprinting imbedded in our human substructure.
The exhibition runs from February 12 to March 10.
