Enrique Chagoya & Don Farnsworth - "A Conversation on Books, Censorship, and Collaboration"

The YouTube video below includes a presentation by Enrique Chagoya about his artist's books and codices, followed by comments by Magnolia director Don Farnsworth and a Q&A session with both. Recorded on February 26, 2022 at the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, CA.

"Postcolonial Contemporary" closes Sunday 7/10

Enrique Chagoya - Untitled (After Edward Curtis), 2016
Etching with acrylic; 17 x 23.75 inches (paper size 22 x 29.75 inches). Edition of 12
Bay Area friends -- be sure to see "Postcolonial Contemporary" at San Francisco's Incline Gallery this weekend. The show will come down on Monday, July 11.

Curated by John Zarobell, "Postcolonial Contemporary" features thought-provoking work by artists including Lewis deSoto and Enrique Chagoya, whose Untitled (After Edward Curtis) (2016) was published by Magnolia Editions.

Genevieve Quick of Temporary Art Review writes:

In Enrique Chagoya’s Untitled (After Edward Curtis) (2016), the artist inserts a billboard featuring an Apple iPad Mini and the all-seeing eye of the American dollar in the expansive and unspoiled Western landscape of Edward Curtis’s An Oasis in the Badlands (1905). The West and the American West, specifically the Bay Area, are places where money and corporate interests saturate the visual and physical landscape. Famously, Curtis attempted to capture an “authentic” picture of the “vanishing” Native American Indians, which was a somewhat problematically conceived and executed enterprise. Chagoya also includes a small, shadowy figure leaping across a small pool of water, a reference to Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Behind the Gare St. Lazare (1932). Cartier-Bresson’s image embodies what the photographer termed the “decisive moment,” the creative point when a photographer acts upon the world to frieze a moment, rendering it magical. In juxtaposing Curtis and Cartier-Bresson, Chagoya presents two photographic paradigms: one where the photographer is in search of a specific picture and the other that waits for the world to unfold and operates on the serendipity of life. Chagoya almost poses the question about how we intervene on a world where corporate interests threaten the stability of place for those less powerful, when is the “decisive moment”?

Read the whole review here, and check out Incline Gallery's website for visiting information: the gallery is open 1-6 pm this weekend.

More art by Lewis deSoto from Magnolia Editions

More art by Enrique Chagoya from Magnolia Editions

Kiki Smith, Magnolia Editions at Peters Projects this weekend

Kiki Smith - Congregation, 2014
Jacquard tapestry with hand painting and gold leaf, 116 x 76 in. Edition of 10
"Kiki Smith: Woven Tales" opens this Friday, May 13th at Peters Projects in Santa Fe, NM. This spectacular exhibition features all of Smith's tapestries to date (nearly a dozen), hanging together in one room!

There will be an artist talk with Kiki Smith and Donald & Era Farnsworth at Peters Projects on Saturday, May 14th at 11 am.

Kiki Smith - Visitor, 2015
Jacquard tapestry, 116 x 76 in. Edition of 10
Also opening Friday at Peters Projects is a traveling adaptation of the "Magnolia Editions: Innovation and Collaboration" exhibition first presented at the Sonoma County Museum of Art earlier this year.

"Magnolia Editions: Innovation and Collaboration" is curated by Randy Rosenberg and includes work from the last three decades by artists such as Robert Arneson, David Best, Enrique Chagoya, Chuck Close, Bruce Conner, Lewis deSoto, Donald & Era Farnsworth, Guillermo Galindo, Mildred Howard, Robert Hudson, Deborah Oropallo, Mel Ramos, The St. Petersburg Travelers, and Richard Wagener.

Bruce Conner - ANGEL WALL, CANYON DE CHELLEY, 2003/1976
Archival pigmented inkjet on Rives BFK white, 17.75 x 23.5 in. Edition of 10
Peters Projects is located at 1011 Paseo De Peralta, Santa Fe, NM. If you can't make it to the opening, check out the shows on the Peters Projects website!

More work by Kiki Smith from Magnolia Editions

Recent shows & events: Pace in Palo Alto, Close at Magnolia, Kala Auction 2016, and more

Donald Farnsworth shows Chuck Close new experiments with recreating quattrocento-era paper at Magnolia Editions.
Congratulations to Pace Gallery on the opening of their new location in Palo Alto, California.

Magnolia Editions staff were on hand at the opening of the inaugural exhibition last month, which featured work by James Turrell alongside a selection of Pace artists including Chuck Close; both Turrell and Close also attended the opening, with Close visiting Magnolia later in the week to review proofs of new works on paper (more photos here).

James Turrell, Chuck Close, and Era Farnsworth at Pace Gallery's new location in Palo Alto.

Chuck Close, Donald Farnsworth, Era Farnsworth, Nicholas Price, and Tallulah Terryll at Magnolia Editions.

Donald Farnsworth, Nicholas Price, and Chuck Close at Magnolia Editions.
Congratulations to Enrique Chagoya on a wonderful show at Anglim-Gilbert’s new gallery location on Minnesota St in San Francisco:

Prints by Enrique Chagoya (created at & published by Magnolia Editions) at Anglim-Gilbert.

Era Farnsworth at Anglim-Gilbert with Gallery Manager Shannon Trimble.
Congratulations also to Nora Pauwels and John DeMerritt, as well as to Rene Bott and Pam Paulson, for being honored recently at Kala Institute's 2016 Auction & Gala:

Nora Pauwels and John DeMerritt are honored as Artists of the Year by Kala Institute Executive Director Archana Horsting.

Nora Pauwels and John DeMerritt are honored as Artists of the Year by Kala Institute Executive Director Archana Horsting.

Audience of artists and art lovers at the Kala Institute 2016 Auction.

Pam Paulson and Renee Bott of Paulson Bott Press are honored for their contributions to the community by Kala Institute Executive Director Archana Horsting.
Check out many more photos of Chuck Close with new works in progress at Magnolia by viewing the full photo album at Magnolia's Facebook page!

Openings and Events: SF Art Fair, "PAPER" in Point Reyes, and more

Mixed-media works by Deborah Oropallo (created at Magnolia Editions) featured at artMRKT San Francisco.
Magnolia Editions is pleased to announce various events and exhibitions in the Bay Area this weekend and beyond:

As pictured above, the international SF Art Fair, officially known as artMRKT San Francisco, will be held April 27 - May 1, 2016 at the Festival Pavilion at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

This Saturday April 30, from 1 - 4 pm please join us for the opening of PAPER, an exhibition curated by Inez Storer and featuring work by Storer, Enrique Chagoya, Donald & Era Farnsworth, Heather Peters, Tallulah Terryll, Andrew Romanoff, Carrie Lederer, and more! PAPER is happening at Toby's Gallery: 11250 State Route One, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956.

Selections from Donald & Era Farnsworth's Art Notes project, included in the PAPER exhibition in Point Reyes.
Then on Sunday May 1 from 3 - 5 pm, Natalie Ng's "Maasai Women and Four Legged Friends" exhibition of oil paintings opens at the Robert Mondavi Winery with a reception and wine tasting: Robert Mondavi Winery, 7801 St. Helena Highway, Oakville, CA 94562.

Enrique Chagoya - Caníbales Daguerrotípicos

Enrique Chagoya - Caníbales Daguerrotípicos, 2015.
Inkjet on RC photo paper, 6.5 x 95 in. Edition of 12
In his 2015 print edition Caníbales Daguerrotípicos, Enrique Chagoya’s “reverse Modernism” gives birth to a series of scenes halfway between dream and art historical legend. The print is structured like a pre-Columbian codex, reading right to left with each section paginated by traditional Mayan numbers; but instead of printing on the Amate bark paper often used for his codices, here Chagoya’s imagery is filtered through the reflective, grisaille, silver-grained look of a 19th-century daguerreotype and printed on heavyweight, glossy RC photo paper.

Detail from Enrique Chagoya - Caníbales Daguerrotípicos, 2015. Chagoya's "reverse Modernism" dresses a photograph of Pablo Picasso and his wife in African masks; behind them stands a vintage Hervé advertisement with text detourned by the artist; above their umbrella soars a plane-shaped coffin from West Ghana.
Caníbales Daguerrotípicos hinges on a dreamlike collage technique pioneered by the Surrealists, but can ultimately be read as an inversion of 20th-century Modernism, a strategy for which the artist has coined the term “reverse Modernism.” Artists identified with both Surrealist and Modernist movements were enthusiastic in their affection for art from Africa and indigeneous American cultures, extending their appreciation for the “noble savage” to bold, even shameless appropriation – what Chagoya deftly terms “cannibalization” — of formal aspects of these civilization’s artworks. Picasso’s paintings mimicking African masks are the most well-known example, which Chagoya links here to a broader Modernist tendency spanning various creative disciplines: from Henry Moore’s imitation of Aztec sculptures of the god Chac-Mool in his sculptures of seated figures to Frank Lloyd Wright’s use of Mayan architectural motifs in his designs for well-known Los Angeles landmarks. Caníbales Daguerrotípicos reverses the flow of these influences, channeling an alternate history wherein culture is produced by “primitive” civilizations’ domination and appropriation of Western techniques and imagery.

Detail from Enrique Chagoya - Caníbales Daguerrotípicos, 2015. At left, a famed Eduard S. Curtis photograph is interrupted by an Apple iPad billboard and a small running figure from Cartier-Bresson; at right, a Piet Mondrian-inspired dress by Yves St Laurent adorns a sculpture of Coatlique, the Aztec goddess of life and death, topped with an Aztec skull of the dead.
Caníbales Daguerrotípicos also cannibalizes the work of various photographers who made a career of depicting indigeneous peoples, such as Eduard S. Curtis’s images of Native Americans and Irving Penn’s pictures of Aborigines in Papua New Guinea. With a sense of humor and a keen understanding of the often one-sided historical exchange between Western art traditions and the “noble savage,” Caníbales Daguerrotípicos’ dreamscape turns the feeding frenzy of Modernism on its head as photographs by Curtis, Penn, Cartier-Bresson and Agustin Casasola are all subject to Chagoya’s playful yet deliberate appropriation. Chagoya says he identifies with a definition of surrealist humor once given by Andre Breton in a radio interview – “Humor is the triumph of pleasure over pain under the worst conditions for pleasure” – noting its parallels with the gallows humor common in Mexico, and paraphrases a quote from Breton identifying surrealism not as a category of art but instead as a fundamental aspect of existence.

Detail from Enrique Chagoya - Caníbales Daguerrotípicos, 2015. Thanks to "reverse Modernism," a Mexican street scene by Agustin Casasola is newly populated by Surrealist leader Andre Breton and filmmaker Jean Cocteau.
Given that the cast of Caníbales Daguerrotípicos features several pre-eminent Surrealist artists and writers, it is fitting that the print should take the form of a dreamscape. Patricia Hickson has written of the artist’s codices that “these nuanced, imaginary adventures with a social conscience could only exist in the space of a dream,” recalling Chagoya’s paraphrasing of a pre-Columbian religious precept: “life is a dream,” he says; “when you die, you wake up.” The temperature of information is cooler in this work than in Chagoya’s previous codices, making it even more dreamlike; its muted palette gives the impression of a black-and-white vision unearthed from the depths of the subconscious, or a hand-tinted antique photograph from a mysterious bygone era. 

Detail from Enrique Chagoya - Caníbales Daguerrotípicos, 2015; a Henry Moore sculpture wears the head of Aztec god Chac-Mool.
In Andre Breton’s first Manifesto of Surrealism, the foundation of the movement is identified as “the omnipotence of dreams” and its fundamental goal as “the resolution of those two seemingly contradictory states, dream and reality,” in a perpetual coexistence. Breton’s own history combines elements of dream and reality, especially after having been retold and embellished over the years. Intrigued by Mexico and its rich vein of mythopoetic tradition, Surrealism’s founder famously visited the country in 1938 as an ambassador of the burgeoning art movement. The story goes that Breton, having arrived in Mexico but lacking the ability to explain himself in Castillian, provided a local carpenter with a drawing in linear perspective of a table he wished to commission. The carpenter dutifully returned two weeks later with a table built exactly to the literal specifications of the drawing – that is, ignoring the perspective completely, with one side dramatically shorter and more narrow than the other. According to legend, Breton threw up his hands, sighed “I have nothing to teach these people,” and promptly packed his bags to return to Paris.

Yet in Breton’s Perspective cavalière, a more plausible story comes to light. Breton writes: “Benjamin Péret told me that, in Mexico, a carpenter —surely improvised—received the charge of making a bedroom like one in a photograph included in a catalogue. The man managed to create the bed, the table and the chairs exactly as they looked in perspective. Why not pause placidly in the elusive mirrored wardrobe?” In the end, no one can say with certainty that this encounter with the carpenter ever really happened; it might be nothing more than a parable drawn from Breton’s imagination.

Detail from Enrique Chagoya - Caníbales Daguerrotípicos, 2015; models in YSL Piet Mondrian Pop Art dresses also sport heads from Mexican wrestler Blue Demon and Irving Penn photos of Papua New Guinea, and a Mayan head meets the dandified body of Jean Cocteau.
In Caníbales Daguerrotípicos, Chagoya pauses time itself in that “elusive mirrored wardrobe” of Surrealist dream logic; the impossible or anachronistic situations depicted in his imagery call into question the supposed infallibility of a linear historical narrative, revealing instead the kaleidoscopic, contradictory nature of our understanding of reality. Whether by inviting Aboriginal masks to disrupt and subvert a 1960s advertisement for Piet Mondrian-themed Pop Art dresses by Yves Saint Laurent; dressing performance artist Joseph Beuys in Native American warrior garb; or returning Breton (with contemporaries Marcel Duchamp, Luis Bunuel, and Jean Cocteau) to the streets of Mexico City for another chance to unlock the mysteries of Mexican surrealism, Caníbales Daguerrotípicos reminds us that history’s heroes and their exploits are merely characters in an ongoing fantasy – one that is ours to dream, and ours to decipher. 

Detail from Enrique Chagoya - Caníbales Daguerrotípicos, 2015; at left, Frank Lloyd Wright considers a contemporary monument to native peoples in Mexico City; at right, Joseph Beuys tries on the Native American headdress and breastplate of an Eduard S. Curtis portrait subject.
More art by Enrique Chagoya from Magnolia Editions

Enrique Chagoya at Fundacion Artium de Alava

Tapestries by Enrique Chagoya at Fundacion Artium de Alava; photo ℅ Artium
The staff at Fundacion Artium de Alava in Alava, Spain generously sent us these photographs of Enrique Chagoya's current exhibition, "Enrique Chagoya: Palimpsesto caníbal."

The show will remain on view through January 12, 2014 and includes prints and tapestries published by Magnolia Editions as well as drawings, mixed-media works, and codex books.

Artwork by Enrique Chagoya at Fundacion Artium de Alava; photo ℅ Artium

Artwork by Enrique Chagoya at Fundacion Artium de Alava; photo ℅ Artium

Artwork by Enrique Chagoya at Fundacion Artium de Alava; photo ℅ Artium

Artwork by Enrique Chagoya at Fundacion Artium de Alava; photo ℅ Artium
More work by Enrique Chagoya at Magnolia Editions

Exhibitions in October

Enrique Chagoya - Time Can Pass Fast or Slowly, 2009
Mixed media with acrylic on gessoed amate paper
40.5 x 40.75 in. Edition of 10
October will be full of shows featuring work from Magnolia Editions at venues all over the world!

In Spain, Enrique Chagoya's exhibition at the Fundacion Artium de Alava, "Enrique Chagoya: Palimpsesto caníbal" will open this Friday, October 4th and remain on view through January 12, 2014.

Here in Oakland, Joyce Gordon Gallery's ten year anniversary show "Then is Now" includes work by a host of Magnolia-affiliated artists including Mildred Howard, Hung Liu, Squeak Carnwath, Enrique Chagoya, and Mel Ramos. Bay Area residents are encouraged to check out "Then is Now" this month; the show comes down October 26, 2013.

Meanwhile, at Hong Kong's 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, several tapestries published by Magnolia Editions are included in Hung Liu's "Mid Autumn Moon" exhibition, on view through this Saturday, October 5th.

In Berkeley, California, Magnolia directors Donald and Era Farnsworth and longtime Magnolia collaborator Rupert Garcia are among the artists featured in "New Media Combinations: Traditional - Digital," which runs until November 16, 2013 at the Berkeley Art Center. Artists in the show will also participate in a panel on October 26 where attendees will have more opportunities to hear about the inspiration and processes behind each work.

Finally, our friends in Oregon have the opportunity to see numerous tapestry editions by Chuck Close at the Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts / Blue Sky Gallery, where "Chuck Close: Tapestries" runs through October 27, 2013.

Magnolia's new gallery space

We are pleased to say that our recent events in the newly renovated entry space have been fantastic successes.

For those who could not make it, please have a look at these photos for an idea of what it's like walking into the new and improved Magnolia! (Click any image to enlarge.)

Shelly the dog and Squeak Carnwath's 2006 tapestry Relic greet visitors at the door

Works by Chuck Close, Enrique Chagoya, Hung Liu, and Rupert Garcia in our new gallery space / showroom

Print shop manager Tallulah Terryll with recent prints by Hung Liu

Innovative mixed-media works by John Buck and Enrique Chagoya

Work by Kiki Smith, Chuck Close, Enrique Chagoya, and Squeak Carnwath in the front room at Magnolia Editions

Exhibitions and installations

Tapestries by Hung Liu and Donald & Era Farnsworth at the Fresno Art Museum in 2006
Just a reminder to check out the Exhibitions and Installations section of Magnolia's website, which features photo galleries of artworks from Magnolia in a variety of settings worldwide.

Magnolia publications have appeared at museums and venues all over the country, from Santa Barbara to Seattle, Reno to Chicago, and in international exhibitions from London to Romania.

Sylvia White Gallery has even created an interactive, panoramic view of a 2008 show of Magnolia tapestries that is the next best thing to being there.

The Exhibitions section also includes a gallery of artists such as Rupert Garcia, Chuck Close, Mildred Howard, David Best, Mel Ramos, Hung Liu, Deborah Oropallo, and Enrique Chagoya working at Magnolia; even emerging artists such as Kamau Patton and Tauba Auerbach make an appearance!

Don Farnsworth and Chuck Close at Close's studio, 2010
Please enjoy and since many of these galleries have been recently revamped, let us know if you experience any technical difficulties.

Artists at Magnolia

Magnolia director Donald Farnsworth with Stanford Art Department faculty Enrique Chagoya, Gail Wight, Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, and Craig Weiss
Wednesday was another busy day at Magnolia in which a number of accomplished artists – who also teach at UC Berkeley and Stanford - visited the studio for printing and consulting.

Earlier in the day, artists and UC Berkeley alumni/faculty Aaron Maietta and Brody R. stopped by to do some amazing trompe-l'oeil prints:

Aaron Maietta and Brody R.



Trompe-l'oeil prints by Aaron Maietta and Brody R.
Those pieces of wood that appear to be sitting on the press are actually printed on a flat sheet of drywall!

Then later in the afternoon, Donald Farnsworth hosted a group from the Art & Art History Department at Stanford that included Enrique Chagoya, Barbaro Martinez-Ruiz, Gail Wight, and Craig Weiss.

As the Stanford Art Department finally moves into its new building, these faculty members looked to Farnsworth and Magnolia Editions for advice on setting up a state-of-the-art printmaking facility.

The group also took a break from their discussion to enjoy a print on aluminum panel created at Magnolia by Enrique Chagoya:

Farnsworth, Weiss, Chagoya, Martinez-Ruiz, and Wight

More art by Enrique Chagoya at Magnolia Editions

More art by Donald Farnsworth at Magnolia Editions

UC Berkeley Art Department website

Stanford University Art Department website