In the Studio with Pace Prints: How & Nosm

“It’s amazing; they don’t really have to talk in details to do one thing together,” Jo Watanabe said of identical twin brothers Raoul and Davide Perre—better known as How & Nosm—whose new prints are the current focus at the studio. As part of a three-month residency at Watanabe Press, How & Nosm have collaborated with printers to create a new body of unique prints for an upcoming exhibition at Pace Prints in 2014. This was their first real experience with the screen printing process where they hand-finished every print with acrylic, water-based paints. “[We] also use a lot of spray paint, because it gives it more touch to it. I don’t like it when it’s too neat, like machine-printed,” Raoul said, caught putting the finishing touches on the prints. “Well, they’re not machine-printed, but the way they print, everything looks very precise. I like to use some drips and blends and stuff, and make them look more like paintings.”

“At first it was intimidating because so many big names worked here before,” Raoul said. “It’s not just that I was confronted by not knowing the materials, or the process, but also, the high standard the other artists put up, so it was competitive, a little bit.”

Photographs by Alex John Beck 

Next: How Meeting Sol LeWitt Began a Lifetime of Screen Printing