This series of photo-etchings shows the gradual crumpling of a blank piece of paper—a harmless act of destruction enacted on a banal object. Rather than drawing the images by hand, Porter chose to capture them photographically, thus limiting her manual intervention. A cofounder of the New York Graphic Workshop (active 1965–70), Porter was interested in emphasizing printmaking’s conceptual possibilities over its technical attributes. Her use of sequence and humor, as well as her objective approach to materials, connect her work to the emergence of Minimal and Conceptual art in New York City, where she has lived since 1964.
Gallery label from 2020