Highpoint Editions is excited to present this group of four new pieces created in collaboration with Carter at Highpoint Editions. Carter’s work is characterized by an elusive quality, questioning conventional ideas about portraiture, identity, and social conventions. This body of work is no different. A fascinating mash up of photographic source materials, delicate line drawings, diagrams, and a subtle play of color and line, layering and framing, it is aesthetically and conceptually rich work. Using lithography and screenprinting techniques, these prints have a subtle surface quality that rewards repeat viewing. Hard and soft elements are layered upon one another, defying traditional notions of framing and composition. In these prints, the layering techniques unique to the medium reinforce deeply held ideas.
Emote/Although juxtaposes a deeply personal ‘emotion wheel’ with an impersonal instructional diagram of a hand pruning a branch invoking larger ideas about control, nature, and identity. A mundane caption, only slightly altered, becomes poetry.
With Continuous, Carter plays with layering a dynamic collection of screenprinted ‘doodles’ over a rigorously controlled interior view of a 1960’s living room, and all of the social mores and conventions implied therein. The shimmering marks seem to float dreamlike above the picture plane, disregarding the conventional ‘edge,’ and suggesting a more complex and nuanced human identity.
Likewise, in Forthcoming, the juxtaposition of hard and soft lines, sculptural edges and furry forms, and the implication of numerous frames suggest a multiplicity of ideas, identities, and elements that can hardly be contained within a single visual message.
Consistent with Carter’s tendency to mix media, Selfsame (although) includes trompe l’oeil elements that appear sewn into the paper. He plays with revealing and concealing elements of the composition with a personal framing that echoes work he’s done in the past while simultaneously creating something entirely new.
