Chuck Close is a visual artist noted for his highly inventive techniques used to paint the human face, and is best known for his large-scale, photo-based portrait paintings. He is also an accomplished printmaker and photographer whose work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions in more than 20 countries.

This exhibition - the largest collection of Close’s work ever presented in the southern hemisphere - comprehensively surveys Close’s long involvement with the varied forms and processes of printmaking. It shows the artist’s range of invention in etching, aquatint, lithography, handmade paper, direct gravure, silkscreen, traditional Japanese woodcut, and reduction linocut, among others and features images ranging from early mezzotints to monumental later works as well as water colour pigment prints and a new series of Jacquard tapestries.

Brought together in this way the works challenge and blur the boundaries between traditionally defined mediums of photography and printmaking. The inclusion of several series of state proofs provides a seldom-seen view of the technical and creative process required to realise these complex images.

Chuck Close: Prints, Process and Collaboration is organised in association with the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York.

*image (left)
Chuck Close,
Self-Portrait (Yellow Raincoat), 2013,
archival watercolor pigment print (90º) on Hahnemühle rag paper,
photograph courtesy Magnolia Editions and Pace Gallery
© Chuck Close in association with Magnolia Editions, Oakland, California,
image courtesy the artist and Pace Gallery