Profile
Each project begins with the selection of a few photographs from my database—some which I’ve taken, others which I’ve gathered from the internet. Using digital brushes, layer masks, and halftone dots, I build a digital sketch in Photoshop. Then, I produce a physical print with screen and ink. While the original reference photos are abstracted, it’s likely that hundreds or thousands of people have witnessed the images disguised in my prints, creating an exciting potential for recognition and shared experience. Appropriating visuals in this way has led me to important questioning. When the appearance of something has been impaired, disfigured, or altered, who takes ownership? Further, how do issues of authenticity and plagiarism relate to printmaking, digitalization, and other methods with innate ties to reproduction?
While the general multiplicity of print is one of my draws to the field, my particular affinity for screenprinting is based in its long history of interacting with walls and public spaces through wheat pasting and street art. When the pandemic began, I started cutting up my traditional editions and combining them with misprints and rejected drawings. Not only did this limit material expenses, but it also forced me to reassess the value of my own work. The physical acts of cutting and pasting allow for a layered, personal archive, which mirrors the public archive of city streets stratified by ads and art. This new process of using a completed print as mere material requires that I reflect on past work with care and risk.
Vic Barquin is an artist, printmaker, and arts administrator currently based in Chicago, Illinois. She received a BFA in Printmaking with honors from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2016. Upon graduation, she received the Genevieve McMillan-Reba Stewart Traveling Fellowship, funding her residency at the Can Serrat International Art Centre. In 2019, she founded Halftone Projects, a collaborative publishing program which she runs out of her second bedroom turned screenprinting studio. Barquin also works at Chicago Printmakers Collaborative as Assistant Director and has curated exhibitions around the city. In August 2021, she will begin an MFA program at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Articles:
www.peopleofprint.com/solo-artist/vicbarquinexhibition/
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