Graphicstudio: Uncommon Practice at USF at Tampa Museum of Art

"Graphicstudio: Uncommon Practice at USF" is the most ambitious and comprehensive show to feature works from the workshop since the survey exhibition of the early years of Graphicstudio at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. in 1991. The exhibit features forty-five years of more than 110 original works by an international array of 45 of the 108 artists who have worked in residence at Graphicstudio.

On view February 1 through May 18, 2014, this exhibition was co-organized by the Tampa Museum of Art and the USF Contemporary Art Museum and curated by Jade Dellinger.

Highlighting both technical and conceptual breakthroughs, the exhibition includes seminal works spanning Graphicstudio’s forty-five year history (by Robert Rauschenberg, Jim Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha, Allan McCollum, Louise Bourgeois, Jim Dine, and others) with some of its most recent collaborative endeavors by (Christian Marclay, Mark Dion, Teresita Fernández, Los Carpinteros, and Trenton Doyle Hancock).

According to Margaret Miller, the Director of Institute for Research in Art – Contemporary Art Museum and Graphicstudio, the exhibition is an opportunity for viewers to see a survey of works that represent leading international artists and affirms that printmaking is a primary medium for many contemporary artists. The exhibition chronicles several aesthetic and technical conversations among artists of different generations. Often times, it is the invention of a new technology that transfixes the artists in residence. As former director, Alan Eaker noted, “It has always been the primary concern of Graphicstudio to make art that was phenomenal and along the way develop the technology to accomplish it.”

Founded in 1968 as a non-profit, university-based, collaborative art making facility, Graphicstudio remains unique in its commitment to aesthetic and technical research in the visual arts. Leading artists are invited to work in the state-of-the-art studios in collaboration with expert artisans to create works on paper – including lithographs, etchings, photogravures, digital images, books – and sculpture multiples in a variety of materials.