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Highpoint Editions is proud to release the newest print by artist Julie Mehretu, Corner of Lake and Minnehaha, a co-publication which has been made through support of the artistic programs of Walker Art Center and Highpoint Editions.
This year marks the 18th anniversary of the release of one of Mehretu’s earliest prints [Entropia (review)], co-published by Highpoint Editions and the Walker in 2004.
Current events and unfolding histories have long informed Mehretu’s practice. Her most recent works are propelled by her reaction to urgent crises in our present moment, and how the media’s framing of these conditions impacts society. From the incessant stream of daily imagery we consume of violence, injustice, warfare, and environmental disasters, Mehretu seeks out resonant photographs—of fires raging simultaneously in California and Myanmar in 2017, for example; or in the case of this print, an image from the civil unrest in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020 following the murder of George Floyd. These photographic sources, which Mehretu alters by digitally blurring, rotating, and cropping them, become the ground of her recent works. The artist then builds upon these in layers by marking over them with her own gestures to create visually and conceptually complex abstractions.
Working with Master Printer Cole Rogers and the team of printers at Highpoint Editions, Mehretu developed this work into a 17-run screenprint. This ambitious print combines a halftone dot pattern in Cyan, Magenta and Yellow along with drawings by the artist that are layered one by one in various tones of black and colored inks.
— Siri Engberg, Senior Curator and Director of Visual Arts
