Lori Bookstein Fine Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of recent monoprints by Willard Boepple. This is the artist's fourth solo-show with the gallery and the first devoted to his work on paper.
Boepple’s first monoprints, made with the master printer Kip Gresham in Cambridge, England were originally inspired by the artist’s resin sculptures. Layered shapes derived directly from the sculpture explored themes of layering and translucency. Over the last two years, Boepple’s imagery evolved into forms that fold over themselves, layering on one another, almost like origami. This theme developed a number of different formats that invite the viewer to draw associations to quotidian objects such as Band-Aids, envelopes, and tents.
Once a composition has been established, the artist then “builds them with color” from palettes of vibrant reds and brilliant oranges to more subdued shades of mossy greens and icy blues. The differences between these colorations has notably different emotive effects. The depth and dynamism of his palette is further heightened with overlays of varnish. The contrast between the glossy and matte colors moves certain planes forward while others recede, so that the viewer’s perceptions of where the forms sit in space remain in flux.
A monograph of the artist by Karen Wilkin, Willard Boepple Sculpture: The Sense of Things, will be published by Lund Humphries this fall. A concurrent exhibition of the artist’s sculpture will be on view from November 2014 – January 2015.
Willard Boepple was born in Bennington, Vermont in 1945, and grew up in Berkeley, California. He studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1963), the University of California at Berkeley (1963-64), RISD (1967) and CUNY City College (1968). After teaching at Bennington College and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, he returned to New York, where he has lived for over thirty years. He has exhibited widely here and abroad, at galleries including Acquavella, André Emmerich, Tricia Collins and Broadbent Gallery, London. His work belongs to such noted institutions as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Storm King Art Center and The Fitz William Museum in Cambridge, UK. Boepple served as chairman of the Triangle Artists' Workshop for twenty years, an artist residency program which he helped replicate in Africa and the Caribbean.
Willard Boepple: Monoprints will be on view from July 7- August 1, 2014. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, July 10th, from 6-8 pm. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10:30 am to 6:00 pm. For additional information and/or visual materials, please contact Joseph Bunge at (212) 750-0949 or by email at joseph@loribooksteinfineart.com.