Sculptors in Print, Marlborough Fine Art, London

A new group show, Sculptors in Print, opens at Marlborough Fine Art, London, on 6 April. In this unique presentation, the gallery celebrates the lesser known print works of four internationally renowned sculptors: Louise Bourgeois, Anish Kapoor, Richard Serra and Kiki Smith. Sculpture and printmaking have always had an affinity, and as Nancy Campbell writes in her introduction to the exhibition, “it’s bewitching when a sculptor brings their sensibility for space to the constraints of a single plane, and unafraid of technical experiment, explore different means of making marks.”

Taking centre-stage is Kapoor’s Shadows and Horizon Shadows series comprised of bands of light and dark out of which vibrate rich fields of colour; aquamarine, scarlet, magenta, cobalt blue. The colours recall the mountains of vivid powdered pigment in Kapoor’s sculpture. Meanwhile, Bourgeois’s Sainte Sebastienne reworks the Christian martyr as a strong female figure typifying her punning treatment of gender in some of her sculptures. Bourgeois employed fabric in many of her sculptures, recalling her mothers work restoring tapestries, and she went on to introduce fabric into many of her graphic works, including the 36 part set The Fragile.

Elsewhere, Serra’s dense black ink etchings appear as if he has inked the faces of his sculptures and laid them onto the paper, and Smith’s interest in body politics and the natural world are expressed in her prints. Smith focuses on fleeting external appearances, and what she calls ‘skin as an envelope.’ An illustrated catalogue with text by Campbell, poet and editor of Printmaking Today, will accompany the exhibition.

Sculptors in Print, 6-30 April, Marlborough Fine Art, 6 Albemarle Street, London W1S 4BY.

Find out more: www.marlboroughlondon.com.

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Credits
1. Anish Kapoor, Shadow III, Untitled 5, 2009, Coloured etching, edition of 39, 72.5 x 96.5 cm. Courtesy of Marlborough Fine Art.