This lithograph was produced in collaboration with Ruttkowski;68 on the occasion of Devin Troy Strother’s solo show called “Lignes Noires” at Ruttkowski;68 (Paris) which was on view from October 12th until November 9th 2019.
“The printing house is amazing, it’s like a piece of history. It’s definitely amazing to print in the same stable than Chagall, Picasso, Matisse, Warhol. I worked for a print maker when I was younger, I was a printmaking teacher’s assistant, it’s cool to have worked on print as student and then have to come here and got to do a print on a stone, which is something I’ve never printed backwards working.
Basically, I’m kind of in a transition with my work. My work primarily is based on kind of collage, there is always an aspect of something being cut out and painted and then put back on to the canvas.
While now I’m trying to work directly on canvas and then using any color, it’s just painting now. The image that we did a print off is one of the first straight painting that I’ve made without any kind of collage aspect thing. It’s on the way of this new way of working that I want to explore. This print is like a story marker of this new way of painting.
Also, there is a lot of black faces motifs in a lot of my works. In the new works, it’s still there but it’s void of colors on the face, like a kind of post-racial area, “transracial”. I’m trying to take out the race, it’s still there, but it’s not the total focus : it becomes part of the focus, to try to change the conversation as well.
I’m very happy about the lithograph which is ecstatic.” Devin Troy Strother
