SYDNEY.- Bringing together over 200 works Chuck Close: Print, Process and Collaboration is the first large-scale overview of the artist's work in Australia. Chuck Close is one of the most important figures in the realms of painting and printmaking over the past 40 years and both the general public and a more specialised art audience admire his practice equally.

Terrie Sultan, curator of the exhibition and Director of the Parrish Museum, Water Mill, New York, has worked in close collaboration with the artist to bring together all of the highpoints of Close’s works with printmaking since 1972. In addition, Close has just completed a masterful new 84-colour woodcut Self-Portrait (2014) in time to be included in the exhibition.

The exhibition also coincides with a reprinting and updating of the book Chuck Close Prints: Process and Collaboration which provides a rich source of information on Chuck’s prints and the nature of the work he has undertaken in conjunction with some of the worlds leading print studios.

Part of the exhibition’s aim is to reveal the ‘magic’ of the processes with which he works. It includes not just finished works but trial and colour proofs, tests and source materials. Brought together they reveal the complexity behind the work. Rather than diminishing their mystery as artworks they make you more in awe of the conscientious, seemingly never ending drive of the artist.

Close’s work as a printmaker began in 1972 when he was approached by Parasol Press to collaborate with Kathan Brown at Crown Point Press. The result was the large-scale mezzotint Keith (1972). Beginning with this print Close began to expand the potential of printmaking, pushing his collaborators beyond what they thought possible due to his innovative visual thinking and constant searching for new modes and methods of image making. Keith is a mezzotint; a process that until then, and even still to some degree, was thought of a diminutive and intimate mode of printmaking.

The National Gallery of Australia has provided important works from their collection, including a group of working trial proofs of the mezzotint Keith, the completed print, as well as the heavily worked copper plate. These works where last seen together in 1973 at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, making them a unique addition to the exhibition.

The NGA has also lent the painting Bob (1970). This painting is part of a suite of 8 black and white portraits that Chuck painted between 1967 and 1970. These works are considered to be the Close’s breakthrough works into portraiture and began with a self-portrait and finished with the painting Keith (1970). Bob is an important work in Close's career and its inclusion in the exhibition provides an important context to which subsequent works can be viewed.

Since his first print Close has gone on to work with various printers and print studios with different media from etching, screenprints, Jacquard tapestries and Woodbury types. At the heart of his work across these mediums is a ceaseless drive to create images of optical intensity utilising the full potential of the media at hand. Close’s major subject is the human face, photographed then reconstructed using a multitude of means. It is important to make the distinction that it is the photographed face – they are pictures of photographs as much as they are images of individuals.

Printmaking to Close is not a separate stream of activity but rather the problems learnt in the printing studio can be applied to paintings. Close has said ‘unique work inspires multiples and prints, and then out of multiples and prints comes more unique work.’ Alongside many of his peers such as Jasper Johns and Roy Lichtenstein (both of whom he has depicted) Close has redefined the print form.

Printmaking is a truly dynamic area of production and this exhibition is a chance to celebrate printmaking in a major venue on an unprecedented scale. But more importantly Close’s audacious and ambitious approach to print media will introduce broader audiences to printmaking’s radical potential. – Glenn Barkley, Consulting Curator