Project omschrijving

PRINT @ Wow – Family

the project

PRINT is a cross-disciplinary exhibition featuring artists who are fascinated by work on paper. It is a (broad) presentation and at the same time an inquiry into the use of print and digital techniques in different media.Visual artist Sigrid Calon was asked to curate this project at WOW and to give it a distinct shape and content. Inspired by the beauty and playfulness of the WOW staircase (the Vertical Gallery), she created compartments for various artists but also arts organizations. Calon stresses the significance of these, each with its own specialism and visual language.

For PRINT at WOW  Mo Swillens  created a new series of portraits with the title: Family. Her photos are called toyobo prints, after the Japanese light-sensitive plates with which they are made. To make these photographic coulour etchings, Swillens works with a combination of digital photography and artisanal graphic techniques. Her digital pictures are colour separated in order to light four plates, one for cyan, one for magenta, one for yellow and one for black.

These are then inked by hand and printed on etching paper in four print runs. With this technique Swillens has developed an original and recognizable visual language, which originated with previous projects such as 99 beds (2011), when she photographed ninety-nine artist in their bedrooms. For PRINT at Wow, one of the toyobo prints from the new series is considerably enlarged and digitally printed.