Artists - Dunn and Brown Contemporary

PRESS RELEASE

Laurence Scholder
Prints
April 5 through May 4, 2002

Dunn and Brown is pleased to announce the opening of Laurence Scholder: Prints. This exhibition will be on view in the gallery’s Project Space concurrently with the exhibition Ellsworth Kelly: New Lithographs, which will be on view in the Main Gallery of Dunn and Brown Contemporary. Devoted exclusively to the fine art of print-making, Scholder has distinguished himself over the past three decades as both a legendary and influential print-maker.

This exhibition will include approximately sixteen relief etchings, as described by Scholder:

The language of my discourse is line, the most familiar yet continually surprising of visual elements. The line can depict a form from nature, divide figure from ground, indicate size and direction, record nuances of weight, or graph a system of proportion removed from any form of representation. It is through the accumulation and collision of the lines that I find what the work is going to become.

Scholder’s etchings in this exhibition are created in relief rather than printed as intaglio. As a result, the drawn lines appear in the finished works as white lines on an inked ground. These etchings are created through a process in which drawn marks are eaten into a metal plate by acid, and then an acid-resistant ground is thinly applied onto the etching plate. After the artist draws through the ground with various tools to expose the metal, the plate is immersed in an acid bath. Through the sequence of these steps, depressed lines in the etching plate appear, and subsequently the plates can be inked and printed. Scholder’s finished works are exquisitely rendered studies in line, depth, and precision.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Scholder has not only lived and worked in Dallas, Texas for over 30 years, but has also been an instrumental figure in the development the art community in North Texas. After receiving his B.F.A. from Carnegie Institute of Technology and a M.A. from the University of Iowa, he joined the faculty at Southern Methodist University in the late 1960s. A distinguished member of the faculty, Scholder currently holds a full professorship and previously was the Chair of the Division of Art for eight years at SMU as well as a recipient of the Meadows Distinguished Teaching Professorship. As an artist, teacher, and mentor, Scholder has influenced and shaped many generations of artists in Texas over the past 30 years.

Scholder’s prints have been exhibited widely in museums across the country. They can be found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Detroit Art Institute, as well as many other institutions.

Laurence Scholder will be present at the opening reception for the exhibition on Friday, April 5 from 6:00 until 8:00 p.m.. The gallery is open to the public Tuesday through Friday from 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. and by appointment.

A catalogue for this exhibition is available upon request.