SERIES

SERIES. PRINT GRAPHICS FROM WARHOL TO WOOL | April 16 - Aug 15, 2021 | special exhibition
catalog for the special exhibition | contains over 300 illustrations as well as interviews with Thomas Schütte, Stefan Marx and Ellen Sturm-Loeding | hardcover | german-english edition

What is it that fascinates artists about series, and even more so about serial repetition in print? Series are open systems, tell stories, play with rhythm, allow variations, and document artistic processes. With his famous silkscreens "Campbell's Soup" (1968) or the "Marilyn" portraits (1967), Andy Warhol (1928-1987) made the serial repetition of images his trademark. By the mid-1960s, Pop Art and Fluxus had made printmaking one of the most important artistic media. New graphic techniques such as silkscreen and offset, with their aggressive colors and punchy motifs, allowed not only large print runs but also previously unknown access to the image motifs of popular print and advertising media. In addition to Pop Art, it was above all Minimal Art and Conceptual Art that brought the serial reproduction of print media to the fore with their graphic consequences.
The Kupferstichkabinett of the Hamburger Kunsthalle owns an outstanding collection of print series which, with the exception of Andy Warhol's silkscreens, have rarely or never been shown before. The exhibition SERIES now shows for the first time highlights of the collection from 1960 to today, which at the same time also outlines the history of this medium since the 1960s from Josef Albers (1888-1976) "Hommage au careè" (1965) to David Hockney's (*1937) cycle "A Rakes Progress" (1961-63), Roy Lichtenstein's "Haystack" to Christopher Wool's (*1955) series "Untitled" (2016). Another focus is on recent acquisitions by young artists*, such as the series "Mid Sentence" (2018) by Nina Canell (*1979) or Helen Cammock's episode (*1977) "Shouting in Whispers" (2017).
The selection of around 50 graphic episodes not only presents major works of this genre from Pop Art to the present day, but also takes a look at the history of their creation and the collaborations with leading printers*, publishers*, and editions that led to ever new and surprising, often revolutionary developments in graphic art. This exhibition project focuses on the serial process, which ranges from the structure of the series as a sequence of motifs to the step-by-step printing process to the viewer's successive perception. How do series come into being in print? Which processes, decisions and techniques play a role? The cooperation between artists and printers is directly documented in the exhibition through films and interviews. The focus is also on the question of new techniques in printmaking. Based on the collection of the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the exhibition demonstrates the visual and political explosive power of graphic series with approximately 300 works.
With SERIES, the Kunsthalle continues the exploration, discovery, and presentation of graphic works that it most recently pursued with the successful exhibitions Zeichnungsräume. Positionen zeitgenössischer Graphik I + II (2016/2017) and Künstlerbücher (2017/2018).
Participating artists*: Josef Albers, Joseph Beuys, Ulla von Brandenburg, John Cage, Helen Cammock, Nina Canell, Jim Dine, Dan Flavin, David Hockney, Jenny Holzer, Olaf Christopher Jenssen, Donald Judd, Ronald B. Kitaj, Maria Lassnig, Sol LeWitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Richard Lindner, Robert Mangold, Brice Marden, Stefan Marx, Almir Mavignier, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Dieter Roth, Fred Sandback, Nora Schultz, Thomas Schütte, Dasha Shishkin, Frank Stella, Rosemarie Trockel, Victor Vasarely, Wolf Vostell, Andy Warhol, Corinne Wasmuht, Emmett Williams, Christopher Wool et al.