World Kings of scruffy pirate black and white hillbilly-musky printmaking, New York’s legendary Cannonball Press is proud to present their first full-scale exhibition in Asia at Above Second.

Cannoball Press present their bill of human oddities in woodblock print form. Drawing from carnival posters from the past, they present a series of physical wonders - bearded ladies, demon wrestlers - juxtaposed with the wonders of human emotions -flowers titled by their emblematic significance “Amaranth – Unfading Fidelity” and culturally clashing ramen noodle wrappers.

The show will feature a selection of new limited-edition black and white woodcut and letterpress prints as well as new large-scale woodcut banners depicting the capitalist wasteland, as seen through the lens of a sideshow for the ages. Mega carny prints on canvas!

For thirteen years, Mike Houston and Martin Mazorra have been publishing high-quality limitededition black and white letterpress prints and creating large-scale woodcut banners and installations.

About the artists:

Mike Houston, a native North Carolinian, has lived and worked in New York for the past six years. Houston works in various media, including painting, printmaking, instrument building, film and video. His style of punk surrealism revolves around a steadily growing stable of images that tread the line between abstract and representational. These narratives are often presented in glossy, highly charged color schemes, and reflect Houston¹s fascination with the tactile, absurd, and shiny. Michael’s recent directing debut, a short documentary about a fellow artist called “Chuck Makes A Woodcut,” was accepted into the Florida Film Festival, the Antimatter Festival, The Nomad Film/Video Festival, and the GenArt Summer Arts Festival. The film tells the story of one man’s effort to cut and print an eight by twelve foot woodcut print.

Martin Mazorra, the oldest son of a Cuban exile in West Virginia, developed an aesthetic submerged in Appalachian economics and pre-Castro nostalgia. He bases his images on the common appreciation and importance both my Hispanic father and rural community placed on their automobiles. For the past three years Mazorra has been teaching lithography and relief printmaking in the Fine Art Department of Parson’s School of Design in New York City. He has taught courses around the US and the world. Mazorra also works as a master printmaker printing professionally at Jungle Press Editions, a print shop that produces fine art lithographs and etchings. He has collaborated with Rudy Burkhart, Stephen Westfall, Michael Mazur, Melissa Meyer, Joan Snyder, Brian Wood, Mary Frank, Mary Heilmann, Jacqueline Humpheries, Elena Sisto, Charlie Hewitt, and Yoshishige Furukawa.

Image: © Cannonball Press