Celebrating Print 2.2 Launch Party

Join us in New York City for CELEBRATING PRINT 2.2 LAUNCH PARTY during New York Print Week, the largest international print event. Stop by to check out the magazine, meet the editor, enjoy the performance of jazz singer-song writer Martina Fiserova and chat with fellow print enthusiasts. We promise to enlighten you with our fresh perspectives on printmaking as an autonomous art discipline.

Celebrating Print 2.2 Launch Party honors the dedication of the writers in their efforts to research and evaluate developments in modern and contemporary printmaking. The contributing art historians, curators and educators craft critical written analysis as part of their continuous efforts to inform the public about the values of printmaking and its significance in Central and Eastern European visual culture. Organized by KADS New York in partnership with the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation, the launch party also celebrates the writers’ strive to elevate the status of the art medium by emphasizing its long tradition of excellence and interdisciplinary crossovers.

KADS New York has also partnered with the Consulate General of Slovakia in New York and Bohemian Benevolent & Literary Association to create this one-time opportunity to engage the public during New York Print Week in a discussion on Central European culture.

In the freshly published October issue, art historian Julia Meszaros offers a survey of modern Hungarian printmaking, which encompasses early forms of narrative works as well as the radical trends of 1980s and 1990s, when artists defied the medium’s traditions by experimenting with Xerox technology and other devices. Curator Barbora Kundracikova explores the aesthetic nature of prints in Sensing Beyond Seeing by applying theory to the works of Alena Kucerova, Marie Blabolilova and Romana Rotterova—three Czech printmakers who continuously translate their personal experiences into digestible pictorial content. The October issue also delves into the realm of fantasy art, a phenomenon typically associated with Central and Eastern European print. Art historian Eva Trojanova’s Carousels of Life focuses on the expansive oeuvre of Slovak artist Vladimir Gazovic and his “efforts to reveal the truth” by combining astute observations of reality with phantasmal motifs. Fluctuations between dreams and reality find a fixed state in the works of Kamila Stanclova, another Slovak artist interviewed by editor Katerina Kyselica. Stanclova’s line-based etchings come interlaced with sublime shapes generated by her imagination and subconscious. You are invited to read the transcribed accounts of her dreams in order to grasp the poetic side of her imagery. Croatian artist Ana Vivoda, whose project Traces is presented to shed light on the printmaking process, reflects on her interactions with the environment as she marks the matrix.

Our contributing art historians, curators, educators and artists: Alena Laufrova (Czech Republic), Barbora Kundracikova (Czech Republic), Katerina Kyselica (USA/Czech Republic), Julia Meszaros (Hungary), Lenka Vilhelmova (Czech Republic), Rada Nita (Romania), Dorota Folga-Januszewska (Poland), Katarzyna Haber (Poland), Breda Skrjanec (Slovenia), Eva Trojanova (Slovakia).