In her two most recent collaborations with Durham Press, Brazilian artist Beatriz Milhazes unites relief, screenprint, and gold leaf in complex, harmonious compositions. Conceived by the artist in spring 2019 during a two-week stay at Durham’s studios and set to be completed this December as editions of forty, Dovetail and Flower Swingmeasure approximately three feet in height with widths of six feet and three feet, respectively. The two works, which share several woodblocks, present stellar and botanical motifs and evoke the interconnected movements of the natural world.
Referencing the woodworking technique used to produce a strong joint between two boards without any mechanical fasteners, the title Dovetail calls attention to the meticulous craftsmanship that enabled both prints’ crisp, curvaceous forms. The printing blocks, cut with a CNC machine, interlock with the exactitude of a Mondrian abstraction, and while certain shapes are purely geometric, some reference clouds, stars, and other celestial phenomena. Both works’ precision is softened, however, by the addition of hand-drawn floral and rain imagery. Milhazes’s flowers, in particular, are rendered here in a whimsical, relatively detailed style that recalls her depictions of blossoms and fruits in her collaged paintings of the 1990s and early 2000s.
The composition of Flower Swing has a triptych-like structure, which invites the viewer to scan the works from left to right as well as right to left. Similarly, Dovetail features strong vertical lines that frame distinct yet related scenes, suggesting narratives and transformations. But the stories Milhazes tells are not linear. They are perennial and fundamental: the passage from day into night into day, from storms into calms into storms. Presented in a visual language that brings together international abstraction and Brazilian vernacular, Milhazes’s explorations of such timeless themes reveal her unceasing ability to create work that is both universal and immediately recognizable as her own.
These new editions, as well as several other prints from Milhazes’s more than twenty years of working with Durham, are available directly through the Press. For more information, please contact us at sales@durhampress.com.