Printmaking’s long history of political and social engagement often seems counterintuitive. It is a highly technical and process-heavy medium, demanding a certain devotion to craft, labor and detail that might suggest a tendency to indulge its technical needs rather than issues beyond it. But on the other hand, it’s a medium exceedingly conducive to synthesizing various forms of content and reproducing it efficiently, making it an effective technique for impactful and graphic communication. John Hitchcock’s work in “Flatlander,” on view through January at the Ski Club (3172 N. Bremen St.), indulges both tendencies. The exhibition deftly reflects the range of possibilities within his most flexible discipline and is fitting for a professor in one of the nation’s most respected and productive printmaking departments, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The north wall of the gallery demonstrates the versatility of Hitchcock’s medium in high relief, with an installation of prints fashioned into buffalo skulls and draped hides—Naugahide, actually, bearing his own screenprinted marks. The Protectors (Buffalo) takes his printing practice into the sculptural realm, with the three-dimensional substrate providing blunt impact, and the printing on them offering editorial context and subtlety. The printed marks suggest Hitchcock’s Native American heritage, with rows of small red Xs emblazoned on the hides menacingly in red, and possibly refer to the crude and systematic annihilation of the once ubiquitous source of existence along the rugged plains of his native Oklahoma. It’s a most dramatic headliner that powerfully announces the show all the way from the sidewalk outside.
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The remainder of the work in the show is two-dimensional. With the sculptural content etched, or better, screenprinted, in our minds, the seven framed works allow a deeper journey into his formal mark and image making without abandoning the spirit of the content. Quanah Parker returns to the subject matter of swallows and buffalo revealed in the installation, but it eventually melts into a network of bold lines and washes of color. Other works deviate even further from recognizable subject matter, building into almost formal arrangements. 4 Mile Rd., despite its suggestive place-driven title, operates successfully as a colorfully-layered and idiosyncratic composition of irregular geometry, skewed grids, and tick marks. It could exist alone as a riotous vortex of improvisatory art, except for the fading swallows that linger within them like a nagging illness that won’t subside.
On the south wall of the gallery, Military Res Boundary Line prompts again with its title, though this one smacks visually as an almost total explosion of abstract linear networks and color. Some symbolic shapes on the lower half hint at literal meaning, but it feeds off of its busy composition and balance of dark, kinetic gestures over juicy warm washes of color and receding shapes.
All contemporary art is a witch’s brew made of portions of three basic ingredients: form, content and process. Proportions of each slide between each other in every artist’s practice. Some pick one and double down, some pick two and double up, while others like Hitchcock use all three strategically as a means to self-reinforce. The work in “Flatlander” showcases Hitchcock’s canny use of form, content and printmaking processes to tell a personal and, ultimately, universal story. A very professorial approach, it seems, for a professor whose work instructs students as well as it impacts public audiences.
