From hacking obsolete computer equipment to manipulating classic video games, Arcangel uses unorthodox approaches to make his often digitally based artworks. A central figure in a generation of artists whose work responds to today’s information-and media-saturated culture, Arcangel has experimented widely with mediums and techniques, including those, like printmaking, in which he has no formal training. For this series the artist played on his amateur skills, creating unevenly inked fields of red, yellow, and blue without concern for how the printing screens lined up. Further exploring the medium’s inherent particularities, Arcangel allowed an element that would typically be discreet in a print—the paper’s watermark—to become central in his compositions, the custom marks revealing his name writ large in a clever twist on the conventional autographed masterpiece.
Gallery label from Abstract Generation: Now in Print, March 15–September 2, 2013.
