Nicole Eisenman

Print Center New York presents Nicole Eisenman: Prince, the first exhibition in New York focused on the artist’s deep engagement with printmaking in more than 10 years. Prince comprises over 40 works—including rarely seen works and new works shown publicly for the first time—revealing how printmaking has been, and continues to be, a generative and vital space for experimentation within Eisenman's broader practice. “Eisenman has found an ideal match in the medium of prints,” says Executive Director Judy Hecker. “Her inventiveness reminds us time and again of how artists turn the challenges of printmaking into possibilities for experimentation, expression, and collaboration.”

The exhibition is structured to highlight the artist’s close collaborations with three New York–based print workshops: Harlan & Weaver, Jungle Press, and 10 Grand Press. Known primarily as a painter when the artist began making prints, Eisenman set out in 2011 and 2012 on an intensive exploration into printmaking, first making monoprints on her own and then setting up weekly appointments with these local print shops. Working in close collaboration with the master printers there, Eisenman has developed an expansive body of prints—including lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, and monotypes—that demonstrates the voracious range of references, imagery, and styles for which the artist is known.

At Harlan & Weaver, Eisenman focused on etching in a body of intimately-sized prints and a large, tour de force of experimental mark-making, Beer Garden (2012), created with the late Carol Weaver. A set of seven unpublished progressive proofs for the etching Watermark (2012) deconstructs the work’s layers step by step and provides a glimpse into Eisenman’s image-making process. With Andrew Mockler at Jungle Press, Eisenman experimented with lithography, drawing directly on a flat stone—but also scratching and working the surface to achieve a variety of visual textures seen, for instance, in Threesome (2012). At 10 Grand Press, Eisenman experimented with woodcuts and monotypes with printer Marina Ancona, often exploring a single image in a variety of iterations, including several on exhibition. Eisenman has continued to work in collaboration with these printers in the decade since.

Prince also includes several rarely seen and new works. A new resin and fiberglass relief celebrates the interplay between Eisenman’s work in print and her broader practice. Furthermore, new works created in 2022–23 with 10 Grand Press demonstrate how the artist moves fluidly between two- and three-dimensions, combining drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. Indeed, sculpture has become a primary medium of Eisenman’s in the last decade. In these surprising explorations, printmaking matrices made from unconventional materials—carved from styrofoam or cast in plaster from a wax-based painting on wood—are displayed as sculptural reliefs alongside their corresponding prints.

Nicole Eisenman lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2018. Her work was included in the 2019 Venice Biennale, 2019 Whitney Biennial, and 2017 Skulptur Projekte Münster in Münster, Germany. Having established herself as a painter, Eisenman has expanded her practice into the third dimension.

Recent solo exhibitions include Heads, Kisses, Battles: Nicole Eisenman and the Moderns at Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Bielefeld, Germany (2021), traveling to Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau, Switzerland (2022), Fondation Vincent Van Gogh, Arles, France (2022), and Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Netherlands (2022); Nicole Eisenman. Giant Without a Body at the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway (2021); Nicole Eisenman and Keith Boadwee at the Flag Art Foundation, New York, NY (2020); Nicole Eisenman. Sturm und Drang at The Contemporary Austin, Austin, TX (2020); Baden Baden Baden at Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, Germany (2018); Now or Never, at Secession, Vienna, Austria (2017); and Al-ugh-ories at New Museum, New York, NY (2016).