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Julie Mehretu — Entropia (review)
Julie Mehretu

Entropia (review)

2004

Entropia (review), completed in 2004, presents Julie Mehretu's signature visual language at full intensity across a large-scale sheet measuring 85.1 by 111.8 centimeters. The work layers architectural schematics, cartographic fragments, and gestural marks through a technically demanding 32-color lithograph and screenprint process, producing a composition that simultaneously suggests urban infrastructure and its dissolution. Vectors of movement collide with ghostly geometric underlays, creating the sense of a city in perpetual transformation, order and chaos coexisting within a single charged surface. Mehretu developed this print in close collaboration with Walker Art Center and Highpoint Editions, publishers whose commitment to ambitious, technically complex editions is well established. The 32-color process is not merely a technical achievement but a conceptual one, each successive layer of color and line contributing to the work's central theme of entropy as a generative force rather than a destructive one. The title itself signals this reading: entropia, a term evoking thermodynamic disorder, becomes in Mehretu's hands a framework for understanding how societies, architectures, and histories accumulate and unravel simultaneously. Available as a signed edition of 45, the print carries the intimacy of a limited-run work while retaining the visual ambition of Mehretu's large-scale paintings. Collectors will find in this piece a defining document of her practice at a formative moment, before her work entered major institutional collections worldwide and her prices reflected that recognition. The absence of framing allows for bespoke presentation choices suited to individual collection contexts.

Medium
32-color lithograph and screenprint
Sheet
Signed
Yes

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About this work

Julie Mehretu, Entropia (review), 2004

Entropia (review), completed in 2004, presents Julie Mehretu's signature visual language at full intensity across a large-scale sheet measuring 85.1 by 111.8 centimeters. The work layers architectural schematics, cartographic fragments, and gestural marks through a technically demanding 32-color lithograph and screenprint process, producing a composition that simultaneously suggests urban infrastructure and its dissolution. Vectors of movement collide with ghostly geometric underlays, creating the sense of a city in perpetual transformation, order and chaos coexisting within a single charged surface. Mehretu developed this print in close collaboration with Walker Art Center and Highpoint Editions, publishers whose commitment to ambitious, technically complex editions is well established. The 32-color process is not merely a technical achievement but a conceptual one, each successive layer of color and line contributing to the work's central theme of entropy as a generative force rather than a destructive one. The title itself signals this reading: entropia, a term evoking thermodynamic disorder, becomes in Mehretu's hands a framework for understanding how societies, architectures, and histories accumulate and unravel simultaneously. Available as a signed edition of 45, the print carries the intimacy of a limited-run work while retaining the visual ambition of Mehretu's large-scale paintings. Collectors will find in this piece a defining document of her practice at a formative moment, before her work entered major institutional collections worldwide and her prices reflected that recognition. The absence of framing allows for bespoke presentation choices suited to individual collection contexts.

Medium
32-color lithograph and screenprint
Dimensions
sheet: 85.1 x 111.8 cm
Year
2004
Edition
of 45
Signed
Hand-signed by the artist
Seen at
Highpoint Editions

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Collected by

Alex Capecelatro, Rocky Lindt, Hamilton Selway Gallery