Counterproof: The Other Side of Print

Incline Gallery is delighted to present Counterproof: The Other Side of Print,

organized by Guest Curator John Zarobell. The exhibition opens on Friday, April

13th, from 6-9 pm, and will remain on view through Sunday, May 20th. Featuring a

diverse group of artists working in a number of media, Counterproof will explore

new avenues in contemporary printmaking. By juxtaposing divergent approaches,

the exhibition simultaneously celebrates and deconstructs the very notion of

printmaking itself.

Printmaking has never been more vital, or more central to the practices of

contemporary art. While we are accustomed to think of prints as ink and pulp,

Counterproof suggests that printmaking could be perceived as the practice of

injecting the multiple and the matrix into the broader domain of contemporary

practice. Printmaking extends beyond the press to light, to space, to action. The

works on view here show just a few ways that artists have repurposed time-

honored print techniques (whether intentionally or not) to produce works of vivid

imagination and extended conceptual reach. To project light through a medium, to

run a porcelain plate through a press, to sew stencils together to generate a form

from negative space—all of these methods owe debts to print even as they redefine

the form. Print is not only a technique but a modality, a means of encountering and

mediating the world. An edition could be an image, or a sculpture, but it could also

suggest an experience or an event, a means of making something recur, over and

again.

Counterproof will feature works by artists Elisheva Biernoff, Adam Feibelman, The

Great Tortilla Conspiracy, David Linger, and Imin Yeh. Elisheva Biernoff appears

courtesy of Eli Ridgway Gallery. Her work, recently been featured there, as well

as at the Kala Art Institute, and the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, explores

reverie, imagination, make-believe, and fantasy and she will represented here with

her installation, Out the Window. Adam Feibelman’s work has recently been shown

at Guerrero Gallery, White Walls Gallery, 111 Minna Gallery, and Rowan Morrison

Gallery. For Counterproof, he will show a group of sewn stencils/paper relief

sculptures, which play with notions of space and light, and whimsically subvert

forces of modernity. The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, “The World’s Most Dangerous

Tortilla Art Collective” is a group of artists who have realized interventions around

the topic of print and food from the DeYoung Museum to SOMArts Cultural Center

to Occupy Oakland. The members Art Hazelwood, Jos Santos, Rene Yañez and Rio

Yañez all have independent careers that include printmaking in various formats as

well. They will stage a performance at the opening, traces of which will remain in

the gallery for the run of the show. David Linger has exhibited recently at Meridian

Gallery, The Bellevue Museum of Art, Cabrillo Gallery, and the Braunstein/Quay

Gallery. His work explores ephemerality through fleeting visual phenomena and he

will be represented by a group of porcelain plates that incorporate images and texts.

Imin Yeh has been engaged in a variety of provocations at exhibition venues around

the Bay Area that have taken many forms, including a current installation in the

exhibition, including an installation for Renegade Humor (currently on view at the

San Jose Museum of Art) that visually deconstructs reductive and racist stereotypes.

She has also shown recently as part of Shadowshop at SFMOMA and at Southern

Exposure Gallery and at Incline Yeh will present a paper installation.