Zach Clark is an Oakland, CA based artist, educator, and publisher. He received his BFA from University of Illinois Chicago, and MFA from University of California Davis. His work is rooted in locational memory and is based in the intersection of printmaking, photography, and publication. He publishes as National Monument Press, a publishing project focused on supporting uniquely American stories through small edition printed matter and curatorial projects, completed largely through collaboration with other artists. He is one half of Chute Studio, an Oakland based Risograph publishing studio. He is a lecturer at California State University East Bay, and has shown, worked, taught, and is in collections across North America, Europe, and Japan.
On the 5th of December we opened his exhibition “On Reflection” in TYPA gallery.
“On Reflection” is a collection of print based work presented as an attempt to document urban interactions with the sun in the increasingly shortened daylight of early Estonian winter. Images, text, and textures printed primarily through the near obsolete method of Mimeograph printing offer alternative and experimental approaches to capturing the ephemeral nature of light and the difficulty of language to describe it. Existing as a document of the passing of days, this living exhibition will open December 5th, with new works being added up until the shortest day of the year.
Zach writes about the exhibition:
“This exhibition includes two unique bodies of work, the eponymous “On Reflection”, as well as the process journal “Mimeograafide Trükkimine Typas”, documenting my initial interactions and experimentations with Typa’s Gestetner 360 Mimeograph. On Reflection, features on 3 sides of the gallery, is composed of text and texture based mimeograph prints which you are encouraged to touch and interact with to reveal the photos underneath. Mimeograafide Trükkmine Typas is presented as a booklet you are also encouraged to handle and read, as well as a wall of the used mimeograph stencils created to make the work in the show.
I have traveled the 5000 miles to Tartu for two seemingly unrelated reasons. The first being the mimeograph I made the work in this show with. A mimeograph is a stencil based duplication method very similar to Risograph and somewhat related to screen printing which for a brief moment in the mid 20th century was ubiquitous within office settings for making copies. Back in California, I run a Risograph studio and publishing house and have always been interested in these machines that paved the way for my primary medium, however they are incredibly difficult to find in working condition.
The second, less tangible reason, was a desire to experience the darkness of winter in this part of the year. I have spent several summers in the midnight sun of the North and wanted to know what the other end was like. I have spent the last year paying more attention to the daylight of my surroundings preparing to come, but much like poetry translated from it’s native language, found myself wondering if I could really describe the light I was only a visitor in for a moment in time. Can one describe a darkness without also knowing it’s light?
I found myself equally confounded by what to do with an antiquated office machine that offered little in superiority to other printing methods. However, through experimentations with printing and language and walks around town with my camera, the two motivations began to come together. The mimeograph’s most unique quality is it’s reliance on texture and abrasion to make stencils, essentially being a way to reproduce rubbings. In terms of the light, I may not be equipped to describe it faithfully, but I could capture the way it bends and reflects through space in to unexpected places. These ideas come together to create the work shown here, in which a photograph is taken of a shadow or reflection of light, and a rubbing or drawing is made of the surface of which the reflection appears, accompanied by the address, date, and time, providing a documentation of the ephemeral moment.”
Zach Clark was an artist in residence at TYPA from November – December 2024.
Find more info about Zach and his projects here: www.zachclarkis.com | www.nationalmonumentpress.com | www.chutestudio.com | @zachclarkis