Exhibitions

Niels Borch Jensen Gallery & Editions are excited to present the print shop’s first collaboration with American artist Julie Mehretu. Opening 29 April 2016, the monumental work entitled Epigraph, Damascus will see its inaugural exhibition in Berlin.

Julie Mehretu’s points of departure for Epigraph, Damascus, her first project with Niels Borch Jensen Editions, are layered architectural drawings of buildings in Syria. Among the depicted architectural features are columns, arches and porticoes, all shown from multiple perspectives. While political and social elements are unavoidably tied to these architectural forms, the specificity of the place is less relevant to the artist. Mehretu has once described her works as ‘story maps of no location’, seeing them as manifestations of an imagined rather than actual reality. Deconstructed elements from well-known places get fused, and new meanings emerge.

The complexity of the subject matter is reflected in the work’s technique: The piece consists of six individually framed panels; the size of the complete work amounts to about 248 x 574 cm (app. 8.1 x 18.8 ft). Albeit it’s dense, many-layered composition, it was printed from only two plates: A framework of architectual drawings forms the basis for the first direct gravure plate, which was then composited together with a layer of gestural mark making made on large sheets of mylar. The second plate features Mehretu’s signature painterly gesture: dark, yet soft and light-handed brush strokes, made in spit bite, sugar lift and open bite directly on the copper plate. All these elements are brought together in the proofing and printing process, creating a work with unique physical and tactile presence.

Printmaking has been an important part of Mehretu’s œuvre for a long time, precisely because it allows such radical experiments with the construction of images. The various processes allow Mehretu to take the elements of the work apart and look at them individually in a way impossible in painting or drawing. In Epigraph, Damascus, Mehretu has developed a practice and vocabulary that has allowed her to build deep, dark density combined with an effortless flow, in a composition that goes far beyond traditional printmaking.

Julie Mehretu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. In 2015 she received the US State Department's 'National Medal of Arts'. Among her other awards are the 'Berlin Prize' from the American Academy in Berlin (2007) and the 'American Art Award' from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2005). Her work is shown in many of the world’s most renowned institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the British Museum, London; the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; the Albertina Museum, Vienna and the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. She participated in the Biennals of Istanbul, São Paolo and Sydney and participated in Documenta XIII. Julie Mehretu lives and works in New York City.

Exhibition break: 7 - 22 June 2016