Two Palms has been at the vanguard of monotype and monoprint processes since its founding by David Lasry in 1994 in downtown New York. This online presentation coincides with an exhibition of unique prints currently on view at David Zwirner’s 20th Street gallery in New York, celebrating Two Palms’ lasting impact and achievement in the field and the studio’s long relationship with Zwirner artists and others. The works featured represent some of the most inventive applications of the medium today.
Mel Bochner, who has collaborated with Two Palms for nearly three decades, prepares a work for the press with Two Palms staff, 2021. Photo by Thistle Brown
Mel Bochner, who has collaborated with Two Palms for nearly three decades, prepares a work for the press with Two Palms staff, 2021. Photo by Thistle Brown
A plate used to create an element of one of Bochner’s recent works rests against a printing press in the Two Palms studio. Photo by Thistle Brown
A plate used to create an element of one of Bochner’s recent works rests against a printing press in the Two Palms studio. Photo by Thistle Brown
Works in progress at the Two Palms studio. Photo by Thistle Brown
Works in progress at the Two Palms studio. Photo by Thistle Brown
Each of these prints is entirely unique, a result of the artists curiosity, engagement, and experimentation with the medium. In some cases, the image is transferred from one smooth surface to another, pulling the pigment onto the paper and resulting in a single, unique print—a monotype. In others, an element of a repeatable image made through traditional printmaking techniques is uniquely colored, drawn, painted, or otherwise altered to create a monoprint.
Dana Schutz
This group of watercolor monotypes relates to Dana Schutz’s recent paintings that feature figures in impossible or post-calamitous situations. For Schutz, like many artists, the monotype process is a place to explore new tools, conditions, and happy accidents that later become an integral part of her practice.
Artists are often drawn to Two Palms’ rare hydraulic press, which, unlike a traditional rolling press, applies vertical pressure as a gesture or drawing tool. For Schutz, the mechanism enables unparalleled layering of color using a process unlike anything she does in her painting studio.
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Dana Schutz in the studio at Two Palms, where she has created prints since 2012. Photo by Max Farago
Dana Schutz in the studio at Two Palms, where she has created prints since 2012. Photo by Max Farago
“[The process is] very direct—you draw and paint directly on the plywood, so it felt similar to working on a painting.… I found that it really opened up how I thought about making paintings.”
—DANA SCHUTZ
Cecily Brown
“I often think of them not as studies for the paintings, but as studies while i’m working on paintings. You don’t get as caught up in the material aspect because they’re fast and you can’t pile the paint on.”
—cecily brown
Cecily Brown has been creating monotypes and etchings at Two Palms since 2002. Detail of Cecily Brown, Picture This 3, 2020
Cecily Brown has been creating monotypes and etchings at Two Palms since 2002. Detail of Cecily Brown, Picture This 3, 2020
These works are classic examples of Cecily Brown’s highly erotic subject matter in the gestural style for which her paintings are widely acclaimed. They depict an imagined sexual encounter in an interior setting following the scene in Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1863), referenced by the yellow hat and basket of fruit pictured in that celebrated painting.
These monotypes are richly embellished by hand with pastel after printing—the most extensively the artist has ever drawn on her prints.
MEL BOCHNER
In 1994, as Two Palms founder David Lasry was first setting up the studio on Varick Street and the hydraulic press was being delivered, the artist Mel Bochner—who was Lasry’s professor at Yale at the time—happened to walk by. Bochner became Two Palms’ first artist; for nearly three decades, he has used the studio to continually explore the possibilities of language and shape.
Bochner packs oil paint into deeply engraved acrylic plates, covers them with pulpy paper, and uses the hydraulic press to infuse the paint into the fiber to create a deeply embossed image. The resulting, richly textured works take on the appearance of sculptural reliefs.
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Oil paint is applied to acrylic plates featuring Bochner’s signature typeface. Photo by Thistle Brown
Oil paint is applied to acrylic plates featuring Bochner’s signature typeface. Photo by Thistle Brown
Bochner has made both monoprints and editioned prints at Two Palms. Here, the artist lays out text for an etching. Photo by Thistle Brown
Bochner has made both monoprints and editioned prints at Two Palms. Here, the artist lays out text for an etching. Photo by Thistle Brown
Bochner prepares a work for the press with David Lasry and the Two Palms staff. Photo by Thistle Brown
Bochner prepares a work for the press with David Lasry and the Two Palms staff. Photo by Thistle Brown
A workspace in the Two Palms studio, including the hydraulic press that exerts 750 tons of pressure onto a work’s surface. Photo by Thistle Brown
A workspace in the Two Palms studio, including the hydraulic press that exerts 750 tons of pressure onto a work’s surface. Photo by Thistle Brown
Print racks at the Two Palms studio. Photo by Thistle Brown
Print racks at the Two Palms studio. Photo by Thistle Brown
Bochner with a new monoprint at Two Palms. Photo by Thistle Brown
Bochner with a new monoprint at Two Palms. Photo by Thistle Brown
“If I knew what was going to happen in the print studio today, I wouldn’t have gotten out of bed.”
—Mel Bochner
CHRIS OFILI
Chris Ofili at Two Palms, 2021. Photo by David Lasry
Chris Ofili at Two Palms, 2021. Photo by David Lasry
Chris Ofili has worked with Two Palms since 2006, embracing the unknown outcomes of the printing process to make work that continues his ongoing investigation of desire, identity, and representation.
Much of Ofili’s work since 2010 has addressed themes of transformation that derive from Greek and Roman mythology. To create woodcut monoprints featuring satyrs, archers, and other pseudo-mythological subjects, he uses a microplane to grate pastel pigment onto wood blocks. The image transfers to paper through the magic of Two Palms’ hydraulic press. Ofili says, “The process is liberating because it has no burden of the known.”
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Ofili’s Suminagashi monoprints use the chance effects of a Japanese paper marbling technique to create unique chine collé backgrounds for etchings based on Stéphane Mallarmé’s 1876 poem L’après-midi d’un faune. Ofili interpreted Mallarmé’s poem through his own context and surroundings, in colors that reflect the volcanic ash and coral pink sand of Barbados.
STANLEY WHITNEY
“my hand really showed up in the monoprints. There was more gesture and mark making, and the color layered differently. They felt more alive and had more immediacy than those acrylic paintings I was doing in the early ’80s. I thought, You know what? I’m getting rid of the acrylic and going back to oil paint.”
—stanley whitney
Stanley Whitney’s monotypes feature his characteristic grid formation, comprising numerous rows of richly colored rectangles arranged loosely within a larger rectangle.
The artist applies watercolor and crayon to a smooth wood block, resulting in a wood grain that is faintly visible in the final print. While this process resembles Whitney’s painting practice, he enjoys the immediacy and the call-and-response nature of the monotype process.
ELIZABETH PEYTON
Elizabeth Peyton’s representation of the Italian Renaissance painter Titian—a recurring subject in her paintings—was made following a pilgrimage to Venice and to the small village where Titian was born. Here, Peyton works with oil paint on Plexiglas, which is then printed on handmade paper in the hydraulic press.
Elizabeth Peyton, Titian After Titian 1, 2021 (detail)
Elizabeth Peyton, Titian After Titian 1, 2021 (detail)
Elizabeth Peyton, Titian After Titian 2, 2021 (detail)
Elizabeth Peyton, Titian After Titian 2, 2021 (detail)
After the first printing, the artist returns to the plate and reworks the image that remains. A faint ghost image of the first print resides with newly added marks in the second, a process that often results in unexpected and complex compositions.
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“historically, prints have typically been the afterword to a work. But for me it’s a foreword. Often I’ll make a work after something I make in the print studio.”
—Elizabeth Peyton
CARROLL DUNHAM
“sometimes it’s out ahead of my paintings … sometimes it’s a way to reflect on things I’ve made, sometimes it’s a parallel train of thought that never really crosses over into my paiNTings.… But I do feel strongly that the procedures and the materiality of printmaking have had a big effect on what I could imagine things could look like.”
—CARROLL DUNHAM
This group of monotypes exemplifies the distinctive watercolor monotype process that Carroll Dunham pioneered at Two Palms. The works relate to long-standing motifs within the artist’s practice, including wrestlers, bathers, and trees.
Dunham applies watercolor to large wood blocks that are dried with hair dryers just before printing. The use of watercolor enables him to work without a time limit because the pigment does not dry quickly on the plate. The development of this process opened up new pathways for other artists as well, including Schutz, who uses the same watercolor process in her works.
MARINA ADAMS
“There’s always the surprise element … you just really never know what it looks like on the board or the plate … and because of that, it pushes you to experiment, and that’s just fantastic.”
—Marina Adams
Marina Adams, like Dunham, Schutz, and Whitney, paints with watercolor on a wood block. Once printed, the work is complete—Adams does not rework or hand-embellish her monotypes. The resulting images are bold, decisive testaments to the immediacy of the monotype process.
Adams began this group of monotypes just prior to the COVID-19 lockdown in 2020. These unique prints focus on the artist’s interest in working on a larger scale and exemplify her use of line, color, form, and movement.
TERRY WINTERS
Terry Winters has pursued etching, woodcut, screenprinting, and monoprinting since the early 1980s. For his more recent prints, Winters works from preparatory drawings made prior to beginning the printing process, which are then scanned into a computer and laser engraved onto an acrylic plate.
This work is from a group of monotypes Winters made at Two Palms. A silhouette of a figure emerges, overlaid with Winters’s characteristic patterning and rendered in a subtle color palette.
peter doig
Peter Doig, Untitled, 2011 (detail)
Peter Doig, Untitled, 2011 (detail)
Peter Doig, whose renowned paintings draw from a variety of sources, including his surroundings in Trinidad and his interest in birdwatching, made his first print with Two Palms in 2008; printmaking plays an integral role in his wider practice. This monotype combines the “ghost image”—made from the second printing of a plate that Doig drew and painted on—with watercolor newly applied by the artist, resulting in the dreamlike quality that distinguishes his atmospheric compositions.
Two Palms founder David Lasry in the studio, 2021. Photo by Max Farago
Two Palms founder David Lasry in the studio, 2021. Photo by Max Farago
“Even as monoprints and monotypes have become more widely understood and circulated, we still find ourselves with the ability to be stunned by the results of our trial and error, interrupting the rote, systematized understanding of printmaking.”
—David Lasry
Video footage of Stanley Whitney and Carroll Dunham by Sam Fleischner, 2021. Courtesy Two Palms