"Fantastic Erosion: Imagined Ruins in Monotype"; 40 monochromatic monotypes by Kevin Fletcher: 1999 to 2020, a flip-book.

"Fantastic Erosion: Imagined Ruins in Monotype"; 40 monochromatic monotypes by Kevin Fletcher: 1999 to 2020.? Available for purchase - presented in a flip-book by the Annex Galleries.?

California-based printmaker Kevin Fletcher's work exhibits the hallmarks of an artist who is deeply informed by the Old Masters, but who persistently searches out new and different forms of expression. With an academic background in printmaking that took him from the Midwest to New York to Italy, Fletcher has always been drawn to the possibilities of the matrix and press. However, it's the reductive-process monotype (rendered in le manière noir, or, "the black manner"), which he began seriously pursuing in the late 1990s, that captivates him to this day.

It is as much Fletcher's process as it is the final product that makes his work so remarkable. The matrix – often a piece of Plexiglas – is fully inked before Fletcher subtracts the viscous material, line by line, texture by texture, from the surface using discarded matboard and rags. Upon first glance, each piece resembles a long-exposure photograph, a delicate chiaroscuro allowing depth and atmosphere to emerge from the matrix. But the resemblance ends there, as Fletcher's technique proves surprisingly spartan upon closer inspection: his linework is brief, staccato, nearly careless, but the end result is the elegant unfolding of a diorama of space, time, movement and mood. While Fletcher's early works were often steeped in Symbolism and figurative subjects, this later work focuses on invented architecture in various stages of dilapidation, on moody twilight landscapes, and on strange fabrications of unknown origin. He does not wish to capture the stasis of the familiar, but to render it as ephemeral and ever-changing.

Says Fletcher of his work: "There are sometimes cinematic references and a kind of eddying back upon my own black and white photos from travel, but this is often a subconscious, vague element in my thought process. It is really essential that I can gradually see the?whole?image come into view, almost like the darkroom development, so the speed of my mark making remains in cadence and does not resort to petty affectations, related to a specific location or cause." ? The works included in this curation span the years 1999 to 2020, which feature Fletcher's monochromatic palettes.

Check out "Fantastic Erosions: Imagined Ruins" a flip-book of 40 monotypes, done between 1999 and 2002 by American printmaker - teacher Kevin Fletcher (born 1956).

Use this link to view all of Kevin Fletcher's work available on our site. Use this link to view our complete inventory on our website: https://www.annexgalleries.com/inventory?q=