MINNEAPOLIS, MN.- Moving from the 20th to the 21st century has had a potent impact on the art of our time. Many artists working today have embraced the new millennium as an era where traditional boundaries between disciplines are more fluid than ever before. With works on paper, this is particularly apparent, with many artists using printmaking, drawing, collage, and other paper-based methods as an arena for remarkable innovation. The Walker Art Center has a long history of collecting and exhibiting works on paper, which comprise a significant portion of its collection. Paper Trail: A Decade of Acquisitions, on view March 15–June 17, 2007, features a broad selection of prints and drawings collected over the past 10 years that addresses in myriad ways the means by which contemporary artists have explored notions of time, place, and narrative through the intimacy of paper.

Over the past decade, many artists well-versed in traditional methods of printmaking such as etching, lithography, screenprint, and woodcut have turned to less conventional approaches to these techniques, which have allowed a remarkable range of aesthetic possibilities. Drawing continues to be more broadly defined, with artists employing everything from pen and ink to elaborately layered, multimedia compositions to large-scale environments. Increasingly, artists are using these media in their work, not merely as an end in itself, but often in tandem with other techniques as a vehicle by which to create conceptual works and installations.

In Paper Trail, this spirit of experimentation is seen in works such as Glenn Ligon’s Untitled (Crowd/The Fire Next Time) (2000), a screenprint made from coal crystals; Gabriel Orozco’s Polvo Imprezo (2002), a series of etchings made from dust laid on printing plates; and DeLuxe (2005), a portfolio of prints by Ellen Gallagher that incorporates such unconventional materials as Plasticine, glitter, and magazine cut-outs to create mural-scaled tableaux examining social and historical issues related to race and gender. Many works in the exhibition are images grouped in portfolios and series, a strategy that allows for a powerful sense of original, and often unexpected storytelling. Included in the presentation are artists such as Rachel Whiteread, whose photolithographs of London buildings in various stages of demolition form a potent story of a constantly evolving urban landscape. Other works on view utilize found images or materials to comment on global culture, as seen in a series of drawings on newspapers by Japanese artist Kaoru Arima; or German artist Thomas Hirschhorn’s collaged constructions of news magazine images, plastic, tape, and ballpoint pen.

Many of the works included in the exhibition are new to the Walker collection and have never before been exhibited. Works by a number of artists represented are on view concurrently in other Walker galleries, affording visitors the opportunity to examine their diverse activities across media and through time.

The Walker’s holdings of works on paper, which have been steadily acquired since the 1960s, comprise more than half of the collection. A hallmark of its collecting practice has been an emphasis on in-depth bodies of work by artists with whom the Walker has had long-term relationships, such as Jasper Johns and Robert Motherwell, who are represented by complete print archives; as well as artists including Ellsworth Kelly, Helen Frankenthaler, Claes Oldenburg, Sigmar Polke, Edward Ruscha, Frank Stella, Joan Mitchell, Sol LeWitt, and others whose works on paper have entered the collection from the outset of their careers. In addition, the Walker houses a complete archive of over 2000 prints from the preeminent American print workshop Tyler Graphics, Ltd., which in its years of operation (1974-2000) produced significant projects with some of America’s best-known contemporary artists. Since the 1970s, the Walker has also periodically published editions with contemporary artists, some of which will be included in the exhibition.