Alexia Vogel / Brave new worlds
This year, we have an exceptional line-up of artists in the studio. And who better to kick things off than Alexia Vogel, one of our very first collaborators. Both of her previous 50ty/50ty screen prints sold out fast (unsurprisingly), but fortunately for her many fans, she’s been working her magic on this brilliant new work, just released.
Vogel is currently based in Berlin but was recently in South Africa for her fifth solo with the Barnard Gallery, which was great news for us – we grabbed a gap in her busy schedule to work on a new screen print we knew would be outstanding. It’s not just that Vogel’s talent continues to garner acclaim across the globe; it’s also that the collaborative process we embark on with her is a true joy.
In her primary practice of painting, Vogel’s work is process-driven and accumulative; it builds up in layers, and this capacity and tendency to “think in layers” translates beautifully to the medium of screen print. What’s more, Vogel is now somewhat of a 50ty/50ty veteran, which invites a wonderful freedom to push the boundaries in the studio. Revelling in the process and creative to-and-fro, and enjoying the unpredictability of constant experimentation, we explored all manner of screen printing techniques with this new work – painting directly onto positives, scratching off emulsion, cutting and rearranging, manipulating each layer of colour individually – to result in something remarkable.
Echoing the shift evident in her latest body of work at the Barnard, Summer Ease is equally rich, sombre and expressive, revealing a newly discovered world that wanders ever closer to abstraction, with graphic edges and a darker, moodier palette. A paradoxical softness and dissolving, grainy texture nevertheless shine through, creating a composite complexity possible only in the medium of screen print – and in the hands of an expert painter and printmaker.
Summer Ease is now available online, in an edition of just 30. Get yours now.
And don’t miss Vogel’s latest solo, Strange Light, at the Barnard Gallery. The show closes on 11 April 2023.
