Art Gallery – Marty Knop – Week 13

This week I had the opportunity to interview Marty Knop and check out his printmaking exhibition. His gallery consisted of the art of printmaking with mixed media while exploring mathematics and computer graphics. This gallery really interested me because the prints displayed throughout it really caught my attention. From afar, I thought it was a painting on a canvas but as I got closer I soon realized that the colors and structure of it had to be from printmaking. The lines were perfectly fitted with one another and the colors displayed were bright. Some of the pictures were actually black and white.

I liked the gallery because of the way each picture looked. The black and white pictures could give someone a headache after looking at it too long, like one of those mind tricks/games. However, they were very different from other galleries I have seen before and I was able to see a new form of art: printmaking.

  

Before, I thought the process of printmaking was simple. I thought it was just having an idea of a picture or structure then printing it to make it seem smooth and clean looking. After talking to Knop, I realized it was much more than that. It was experimentation and re-designing even the slightest detail to create something new entirely. It was exploring new ways to express individual ideas or arts and to discover different processes to expand the ones abilities.  To Knop, he was learning about mathematical and computer processes involved in printmaking. He explained how it was combinations of different snips he would create and then use certain software to expand and experiment. He wanted to get a pattern. Knop would begin to cut up and manipulate his creations and begin the printmaking process to create the final product. He would use mathmatica for the process. This is when he would start learning about the mathematical processes on computer. He would use inverses and equations to create a pattern. The products with color were the most difficult since it added more varaibles to the equation.

Knop explained he wanted a to understand the visual processes and present them in his gallery. According to him, he thought about how language is created. Basically he was interested how art is a universial language anyone can interpret from but there are different ways to express it. Knop was trying to have his art repsent what language is made of and what it means. He is interested in the properties in the creation of art and how is came to be another language.