Peter Blum Gallery
IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair Online Fall 2020

Peter Blum Gallery is pleased to present for the 2020 IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair a selection of monotypes from 2018 and 2019 by Nicholas Galanin.

Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979 Sitka, Alaska) examines the complexities of Indigenous identity, culture, and representation while celebrating the resilience and strength of Indigenous people. His Tlingit background informs his practice that combines traditional and contemporary approaches, and employs myriad techniques including printmaking. Galanin embeds incisive observation and reflection into his work while reclaiming creative agency and demonstrating contemporary Tlingit art as a continually evolving and dynamic practice. Galanin participated in the 2019 Whitney Biennial with work in collections such as Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The National Gallery of Canada, Princeton University Art Museum, and Denver Art Museum, among others.

In Galanin’s monotypes, the artist’s hand as much as Tlingit culture’s history shapes the representation. Each monotype bears the imprint of a story of its creation, not as myth, but as lived experience and through memory—the marks showing the spontaneity of a drawing with the enduring qualities of a print. The title of the 2018 series, Let them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces is a reference to an ancestral entrance dance where the face is revealed, not masked. The imagery is central to Tlingit life and references and mimics visual movements of a customary aesthetic. However, Galanin’s contemporary interpretation forms a creative continuum that combines past with present. This is reflected in the title of the 2019 monotype series, Everything We’ve Ever Been, Everything We Are Right Now. Monotypes are included in the collections of such museums as The Art Institute of Chicago, Alaska State Museum, Juneau, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.