Parasol Press: Breaking New Ground

Mel Bochner, Chuck Close, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Edda Renouf, Dorothea Rockburne, Robert Ryman

Parasol Press: Breaking New Ground explores the first decade of Parasol Press and how those years established it as one of the most influential print publishers of the twentieth century. Founded by Robert Feldman (1937–2022) in 1970 in New York, Parasol Press came to prominence for introducing a generation of Minimalist and Conceptual artists to printmaking, and these artists approached the medium in new ways, embracing its serial nature and exploring the materiality of printed surfaces. Focusing on the innovative work published during Parasol's first decade, this exhibition highlights the dynamic exchange that unfolded between artist and medium—artists reshaped the language of printmaking, while the process of printmaking reshaped their own artistic practices.

Curated by Rachel Vogel, Assistant Curator at the Addison Gallery of American Art, this presentation of Parasol Press: Breaking New Ground is drawn from a larger retrospective exhibition on view at the Addison earlier this year, which covered four decades of production. That exhibition was the first comprehensive survey of Parasol's impact on the field and was accompanied by the first publication, edited by Vogel, to detail the breadth of Parasol's editions. Print Center's presentation features work from the 1970's by Mel Bochner, Chuck Close, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Brice Marden, Agnes Martin, Edda Renouf, Dorothea Rockburne and Robert Ryman, among others.

Parasol Press: Breaking New Ground is organized by the Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA.

Rachel Vogel is the Assistant Curator at the Addison Gallery of American Art, where she focuses on modern and contemporary art. Before joining the Addison, Rachel contributed to numerous exhibitions and publications at the Johnson-Kulukundis Gallery at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, as well as curated exhibitions at Art League Houston and Rice University's Media Center Gallery, among others. Her writing has been published in American Art, Art Journal, caa.reviews, Oxford Art Journal, and Print Quarterly and in several exhibition catalogues. She received her PhD in Art History from Harvard University, and she has taught courses at Georgetown University, Harvard University, Vassar College, and the Wonderworks pre-college program at Rice University.