Image: Susan Sheehan Gallery, New York
An exhibition brings together complete sets of Marden’s landmark print portfolios ‘Ten Days’ (1971–72), ‘Etchings to Rexroth’ (1986), ‘Cold Mountain Series, Zen Studies 1–6’ (1991), ‘Han Shan Exit 1–6’ (1992–93), and ‘Suzhou I–IV’ (1998).
The exhibition is positioned as an argument that printmaking was a vital arena in Marden’s practice, rather than a secondary extension of his painting.
The six large-scale etchings in ‘Cold Mountain Series, Zen Studies 1–6’ developed delicate gestural lattices from Marden’s modular structures, with forms that tumble and intertwine like moss or weeds. Across the series, he expanded his graphic vocabulary through aquatint, sugar-lift aquatint, and spit-bite aquatint.
Created alongside Marden’s ‘Cold Mountain’ paintings, the prints draw a parallel between viewing an image and reading poetry. “You read the characters against each other a little bit. The first phrase joins up with the next phrase. It’s a much more open kind of translating than that which is done in Western poetry.”
Alongside the portfolios, the exhibition includes the rare early screenprint ‘Lana 2’ from 1966 and examples from the later series ‘Muses’ and ‘Meres’ from 2001.
