Gemini G.E.L. Marks 60 Years of Printmaking in Los Angeles

To mark its 60th anniversary, Gemini asked curators Susan Dackerman and Helen Molesworth to work through the archive for (Almost) Every Year: Sixty Years of Printmaking at Gemini G.E.L. On view in Los Angeles, the exhibition follows nearly every year of the workshop’s history and emphasizes the back-and-forth between visiting artists and the workshop as a place for discussion, adjustment, and risk-taking.

Gemini opened by drawing in major figures from across postwar art, from Josef Albers and Robert Rauschenberg to Jasper Johns and Ellsworth Kelly, while also supporting the growing Los Angeles scene through artists such as David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, Ron Davis, and Bruce Nauman. The timeline also shows the arrival of women artists in the 1980s, beginning with Dorothea Rockburne and Vija Celmins and followed by Susan Rothenberg and Elizabeth Murray.

Prints that test the limits of the medium

What makes the exhibition especially useful for artists is the way it stages formal conversations. Some works reveal shared concerns, such as Stella and Kelly’s investigations of shape and color, or Rauschenberg and Johns working with found imagery; others unsettle expectations, including Joel Shapiro and Richard Tuttle’s vivid screenprinted abstractions with intricate structures.

The strongest examples stretch the idea of what a print can be. Oldenburg molded polyurethane into a raised automobile profile, Johns printed a lightbulb on lead, and Edward and Nancy Kienholz turned gasoline containers into sculptures resembling television sets. More recently, Allen Ruppersberg split a 20-foot perforated piano roll into four sections for a work that folds together hymn references, handwritten text, and American popular memory.