Suzanne Caporael,Apalachicola, FLA, 2003, etching with hand painted gouache, 29.75 x 39 inches, AP. Courtesy of Addison/Ripley Fine Art..
Opening Reception: Saturday, December 10 from 5pm to 7pm
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Addison/Ripley presents this small survey of prints and paintings by Suzanne Caporael, an artists whose work we have followed, collected and placed for more than two decades. Although the artist has worked with other printers, we were impressed by and wished to explore a range of work over a long period. Therefore, almost all of the prints in this exhibition are courtesy of Tandem Press at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. We are grateful for our long association with this distinguished press and recognize the quality and importance of their collaborations with so many artists.
Caporael’s extensive early travel and lifelong close observation of nature form a lattice for all her work. The painter, herself, offers in all her work an artistic phenomenology, an intuitive, experience based exploration in color and form that is as evident on paper as it is on canvas.
Works chosen for the Addison/Ripley exhibition from the period between 1985 and 2016 all display a distillation of these experiences: painterly, maplike and drifting between grounded and reaching into limitless space. From the earliest included work, “Wave Study #2” 1985 to the “Silo Ridge” suite from 2016, the artist consistently refers to physical universe as structures for her art, in effect manifesting nature in collage, print and paint. Systems of waves, of elements, of birds, stars, trees and geological layers are the language with which the artist works, juxtaposing the strength of the natural world with its fragility. As Edward Leffingwell wrote in the forward to Caporael’s 2003 print catalogue: “Caporael remains interested in thought, the exercise of accumulation and sorting of knowledge.” The accumulation of the artist’s work in this exhibition is a small sampling of a prolific imagination.
In 1986, Caporael was awarded the National Endowment Grant in Painting, which she spent on a new washer and dryer. She has been a visiting professor the University of California, Santa Barbara and the San Francisco Art Institute. In 2009, she was an artist-in-residence at the Joseph and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut. Her work is in numerous public and private collections including the Art Institute of Chicago; The Chasen Museum of Art, Madison, Wisconsin; The Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York; and Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.
Born in 1949, Caporael worked until 1999 in rural California. She currently lives and works on a farm in Stone Ridge, New York.
Gallery Hours:
- Tuesday – Saturday: 11am to 5:30pm
- and by appointment
The gallery is located at 1670 Wisconsin Avenue NW. For further information, contact Ms. Romy Silverstein at 202.338.5180.
