Past

What happens if one disregards the ostensible or most obviously apparent contents of Paul Mitchell's prints—the fragments of faces and bodies, the letters limned by a line of ink, the cartoon fang, the facade of a house, the tangle of trees and fencing?

Answer: Evidence of the intaglio printmaking process itself having taken place, the scoring of surfaces and the subsequent insertion of ink into the resultant cavities, a materially intimate act. And it is that act—the forceful and intentional manipulation of media to get one thing into another—that reflects the broader theme of this exhibition, which is the restless, transmedia urge to explode out of form, content, representation, and materiality to forcibly (desperately? humanly?) connect with the Viewer-Other to ask,"ls this Darkness in you too?"...