Christopher Hartshorne: Crash Blossom
CRASH BLOSSOM
An exhibition by NAPOLEON member Christopher Hartshorne
In Crash Blossom, Christopher Hartshorne’s intricately carved relief prints envelop the viewer with swirling line and cage-like, polyhedral structures. The prints offer dramatic configurations of sweeping form and movement that simultaneously allude to organic structures, chemical reactions, and scientific processes. The exhibition title “Crash Blossom” is a phrase used in journalism to define the ambiguous meanings of certain newspaper headlines and highlights the opportunity to construct multiple meanings in Hartshorne’s prints.
Opening First Friday, April 5th
6pm – 10pm
NAPOLEON
319 N 11th Street, 2L
Philadelphia, PA
Exhibition Dates: 4.5.13 – 4.26.13
Gallery Hours: Saturdays and Sundays 2pm – 6pm or by appointment
In an essay about Christopher Hartshorne, art blogger Alison McMenamin writes for our exhibition series:
The idea of the template is intrinsic to both printmaking and genetic replication, affording the analogy that Christopher Hartshorne’s woodblocks are like DNA, creating a link between process and subject matter. Because of the commonalities of organic structures, the artist’s indirect references to natural forms avoid the specificity of a single image. Hartshorne’s ability to repurpose these basic components to create new forms suggests not just a collection of visual materials but a visual language. The exhibition title Crash Blossom, a term referring to the ambiguous syntax of news headlines, underscores this correlation with language.
To download a .pdf version of this entire essay click Forces_Not_Forms_Chris_Hartshorne
To see a web-version of the essay, click here.
Reviews:
Christopher Hartshorne: Crash Blossom – Amze Emmons – Printeresting.org
NAPOLEON 