Pace Prints is coming to Hollywood.
The New York-based print publisher and studio has established a presence in Los Angeles and plans to open a production facility this fall with an accompanying small gallery, expanding its footprint at what is, for some, an uneasy moment for the Los Angeles art world.
Unlike a traditional gallery outpost, the Los Angeles location will serve as a production facility first and foremost. The goal is to give West Coast artists the time and space to experiment rather than fly in for quick transactional projects.
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In recent years, Pace Prints has collaborated with a wide range of artists, from Jonas Wood to Nina Chanel Abney, Shahzia Sikander and Kennedy Yanko. CEO Jacob Lewis, who joined Pace as an intern in 2001 and has been with Pace for nearly 25 years, has seen media change dramatically during his tenure.
“Printmaking has an interesting history,” Lewis said. They surged in the 1960s and 1970s, cooled in the 1990s, and are now back with a bang. What’s different, he thinks, is the way artists think about them. “Most of the time, they do it as part of their artistic practice,” he said. “They come in and think it’s an extended hand.”
This change is consistent with market reality. As the price of unique paintings continues to climb, in many cases it’s out of reach for even die-hard fans. “They’ve grown to the point where they sometimes become out of reach,” Lewis said of the paintings. He added that prints are “part of the conversation again” as artists view them as serious, hand-made works and present them in a way that has a “point of value… that more people can participate in”.
The numbers prove it. Last year, the number of visitors to the two New York printing shows reached record highs, with more than 21,000 visitors to the IFPDA Print Show and a surge in VIP registrations. Purchases of prints and multi-pieces by high-net-worth buyers increased by more than a third in 2023 and early 2024, with sales in the print industry growing even as the broader market contracted. Printmaking has become a bright spot in the otherwise grim world of art.
Lewis elaborates on this resurgence from both practical and philosophical perspectives. “The whole point of printmaking is accessibility,” he says. It provides “a way into the entire art market,” allowing new collectors to spend a few thousand dollars on something, embrace it, and grow from it.
Jacob Lewis, courtesy of Pace Printing.
That spirit will be on display later this month at Frieze Los Angeles, where Pace Prints will be exhibiting for the first time. Its booth will focus on Los Angeles artists including Ross Caliendo, Brian Calvin, Elliot Hendry, Friedrich Kunath, Spencer Lewis, Jack Longstreth, Hilary Persis and Jonas Wood. Wood’s Ukiyoe Woodcut Suite five bonsai Alongside Pecis’ handmade paper works, Caliendo’s puzzle relief monoprints and Hundley’s monoprints will be a highlight.
The speech goes beyond the Los Angeles name. Works by Nina Chanel Abney, Jules de Balincourt, Nigel Cooke, Tara Donovan, Derek Fordjour, Keith Haring, Yoshitomo Nara, David Salle, Shahzia Sikander, James Turrell and Kennedy Yanko will also be on display, underscoring the breadth of the print conversation.
If Frieze showed where prints were heading, a contemporaneous exhibition in New York looked at how they got there. Pace Prints opens on February 12th chuck close and pulp Where: 536 West 22nd Street, presented by the Chuck Close Estate. The exhibition, which runs until March 14, features major papier-mâché works as well as the substrates and tools used to create them.
Close’s contact with printmaking began in the early 1960s, when he studied painting and printmaking at Yale University. In the early 1980s, he began working with printer and papermaker Joe Wilfer of The Spring Street Workshop, eventually producing 18 pulp editions and many unique pieces. Large grid templates, including repurposed fluorescent lampshades and custom brass spacers, allowed Close to translate his carefully drawn grids into paper mache.
“Virtually everything that happens in my unique work can be traced back to printmaking,” Close once said.
After Wilfer’s death in 1995, Close returned to pulp in 2001, creating Self-portrait/Pulpthis time in partnership with Ruth Lingen, founding director of Pace Paper. Progressive demonstrations of this work will be on display, revealing how sheets of Mylar were used to build layers of pulp. “Working on a printing project with Chuck Close is like making magic,” Lingen said. “Chuck’s incredible vision, combined with his willingness to push the limits of scale and technology, has made his projects some of the highlights of my career.”
For Lewis, the spirit of experimentation was present throughout. Artists came to the shop not just to reproduce an image, but to test the limits of paper and craft. What they learn there often feeds directly back into their paintings and sculptures.
In Hollywood, the lab will now have a new location.
