About the Work
To make these prints, Wilson dripped acid onto copper plates to create what are, literally, ink spots in the finished prints. “In my work, I’m usually pretty sure of what’s going to come out,” he said. “But in this case, I just did it. It’s exciting and scary. I have no idea what others will see in it, or how they will relate it to my work. All kinds of things are going on in this microcosm or macrocosm. In my own mind, I think of the characters in the prints as talking so quietly that you can’t understand them. But of course once someone takes an artwork home, it is what it is to the person who has it.”
About the Artist
Fred Wilson is a conceptual artist of African-American and Caribbean descent who’s primarily known for rearranging art and artifacts in museum collections to reveal the inherent racism and gender politics that are often overlooked. First gaining notoriety in the early '90s with the exhibition Mining the Museum, in which he placed a whipping post from pre-Civil War America in a gallery and surrounded it with four ornate chairs—all from the permanent collection of the Maryland Historical Society.
Wilson has represented the United States at the Biennial Cairo and the Venice Biennale. The recipient of numerous awards, including a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and the Larry Aldrich Foundation Award, Wilson is a trustee at the Whitney Museum and the SculptureCenter. As both critic and insider in the museum world, Wilson’s work challenges the outdated racial and gender hierarchies that these institutions are slow to shed.
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