CHAKAIA BOOKER | NEW Works on paper
We are pleased to present new works on paper by internationally acclaimed sculptor Chakaia Booker.
Though materially different than the sculptures made of rubber tires for which she’s known, Booker’s prints retain a visual link to her three-dimensional works. In her sculptural practice Booker often transforms the bulky tire into seemingly feather-light forms, imbuing the ubiquitous material with social and political implications. In her prints, Booker transforms the static nature of two-dimensional works into dense, patterned compositions almost buzzing with frenetic energy. In some, the gestural, abstract forms seem to burst forth from the geometric figures that are layered and stacked on the paper. In others, genderless figures composed of densely made patterns, float weightless in space yet ready to spring forth from the page.
During her time at the EFA Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Booker experimented with production processes, devising new ways to create work and make marks that draw from the visual language of her sculptural works. In the same way Booker forms sculptures out of unexpected materials, her prints are made with an innovative printing technique. Booker utilizes thin, delicate papers that become transparent during the printing process, allowing each layer to bleed into the next. She then tears and cuts these papers, combining them to make the final forms—an incredibly meticulous process.
In the results of this incredible technique, Booker proves she can bend any medium to her will.
- Hallie Ringle, Hugh KaulCurator for Contemporary Art, The Birmingham Museum of Art
Special thanks to printshop interns: Robert Gomez, Alexa Gross and Adam Shulman.
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Chakaia Booker (b. 1953, Newark) has made public art commissions for Millennium Park, Chicago (2016–18); Garment District Alliance Broadway Plazas, New York (2014); and National Museum of Women in the Arts New York Avenue Sculpture Project, Washington, DC (2012); and was featured in retrospectives at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts (2010), and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri. She has participated in group exhibitions at the National Museum of Woman in the Arts; National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2013); and in the Whitney Biennial (2000), among many others. Her work is represented in the collections of the National Museum of African American History and Art, Washington, DC; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Booker is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant (2002) and Guggenheim Fellowship (2005).
Her solo exhibition “Chakaia Booker: The Observance” will be on view at ICA Miami through October 31, 2021.
