Nicole Eisenman: Prince

An In-Depth Presentation of Eisenman’s Engagement with Printmaking Since 2010

Nicole Eisenman: Prince is the first exhibition in New York to focus on the artist’s deep engagement with printmaking in more than 10 years. Prince comprises over 40 works—including rarely seen works and new works shown publicly for the first time—revealing how printmaking has been, and continues to be, a generative and vital space for experimentation within Eisenman’s broader practice.

The exhibition is structured to highlight the artist’s close collaborations with three New York–based print workshops: Harlan & Weaver, Jungle Press, and 10 Grand Press. While the artist was known primarily as a painter at the time, Eisenman set out in 2011 and 2012 on an intensive exploration into printmaking, first making monoprints on her own and then setting up weekly appointments with these local print shops. Through close collaboration with the master printers, Eisenman has developed an expansive body of prints— including lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, and monotypes—that demonstrates the voracious range of references, imagery, and styles for which the artist is known.

Prince also includes several rarely seen and new works. A new resin and fiberglass relief celebrates the interplay between Eisenman’s work in print and her broader practice. Furthermore, new works created in 2022–23 with 10 Grand Press demonstrate how the artist moves fluidly between two- and three-dimensions, combining drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. Indeed, sculpture has become a primary medium of Eisenman’s in the last decade. In these surprising explorations, printmaking matrices made from unconventional materials—carved from styrofoam or cast in plaster from a wax-based painting on wood—are displayed as sculptural reliefs alongside their corresponding prints.