
Corner of Lake and Minnehaha (blue)
2022
Corner of Lake and Minnehaha (blue) presents Julie Mehretu's layered visual language at its most charged and concentrated. Based on a media photograph taken during the civil unrest in Minneapolis on May 28, 2020, in the days following the murder of George Floyd, the work transforms documentary urgency into something at once abstract and deeply felt. Mehretu began by digitally blurring, rotating, and cropping her photographic source before building the composition in layers, creating separate silkscreens of drawn gestures and marks that accumulate into a field of kinetic complexity. Produced in collaboration with Master Printer Cole Rogers and the team at Highpoint Editions, the blue colorway distinguishes this variation within the series, giving its marks a particular atmospheric intensity. The print is a Printer's Proof from an edition of 45, signed by the artist, and measures a commanding 139.1 by 110.5 centimeters. Mehretu occupies a singular position in contemporary art, recognized for synthesizing vast and often conflicting bodies of visual information, from architectural schematics and European history painting to the visual cultures of African liberation movements. Her practice consistently situates urgent historical and political realities within an abstract pictorial space, refusing both illustration and detachment. Major survey exhibitions have been organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American Art, with a presentation at the Walker Art Center in 2021, the institution now offering this work through its benefit auction. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Tate, the Broad, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and many other institutions worldwide. This print, rooted in a pivotal moment in recent American history and realized through a rigorous and collaborative printmaking process, represents a compelling entry point into one of the most consequential bodies of work being made today.
- Medium
- Screen print
- Sheet
- Signed
- Yes
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