PRINT

Daniel G. Hill
PRINT
Daniel G. Hill
Designed and published by Daniel G. Hill
www.danielghill.com
on the occasion of the exhibition
Print
Melville House
145 Plymouth Street
Brooklyn, New York
Curator: Jim Osman
May 3 – June 25, 2010

All text and illustrations copyright © 2010 Daniel G. Hill

Cover illustration:
Blue Plate 4637, 2010 (detail)

Front, title and back page illustrations:

Blue Plate 4597, 2010 (detail)

Facing and following page illustrations:

Blue Plate 4816, 2010 (detail)

Typography:
Adobe Garamond Pro, designed by Robert Slimbach, 1989, 2000,
based on the roman types of Claude Garamond and the italic types of Robert Granjon from the 16th C.
Clarendon, designed by Robert Besley, 1845
Gill Sans, designed by Eric Gill, 1928
Univers, designed by Adrian Frutiger, 1954

www.lulu.com
STATEMENT I work across the areas of painting, pho-
tography and digital media. As a personally
constructed system of signs, painting is inher-
ently abstract while photography, an indexical
sign left by a trace of light across a film plane,
is unavoidably representational. Though such
a clear distinction can be made between these
mediums, the corresponding realms of repre-
sentation and abstraction are far from being
mutually exclusive. Most attempts to separate
them are fiercely partisan.
My work in digital media explores this
overlap of representation and abstraction by
blurring the line between photography and
painting. In the Red Gray Grid series, I use
photography to re-present some of the more
ephemeral conditions affecting a painting’s
reception by a viewer—specifically, lighting,
point of view and depth of field and their im-
pact on surface and color. This work makes
a maze of representation and abstraction by
creating an abstraction—in the form of the
print—from composite representations (pho-
tographs) of abstractions (paintings). One re-
sult is a tension created by the conflation of a
physical surface and the surface of its represen-
tation.
Cathrine’s Window is an image of a print
in the making. Nocturnal shadows cast on a
studio wall model not only the process of pho-
tographic enlargement but the origins of paint-
ing. Unlike the void left by a hand on a cave
wall, letter forms project through space form-
ing both volume and image without revealing
their origin.
The Blue Plate series is a meditation on the
nature and meaning of the digital print in the
context of this perplexing network of abstrac-
tion, illusion and representation. Probing the
nature of surface and light and their role in the
formation of images, I photograph zinc inta-
glio printing plates from a previous project. As
an image, a traditional print bears a direct re-
semblance to the physical matrix from which
ink has been transferred to paper. In that sense,
it is an iconic sign of the matrix. But a digital
print does not result from a matrix. Instead, it
is a translation of digital code to which it bears
no physical or visual resemblance. So a digital
print is more a performance or translation than
a transference or reproduction. In this series,
the images are distanced from the apparent ma-
trix of the zinc plate through the imposition
of photography folding them into the digital
realm from which they are translated back to
a new surface. They become a recording of the
layered act of looking as a means of knowing
and knowing what is known.
A common aspect of all of this work is the
tendency to give rise to the questions, “What
am I looking at, how do I relate to it and how
do I understand it?” Such self-reflexive viewing
is my goal, as an artist’s role is to remind us of
our capacity to wonder.
WORKS
All works illustrated are archival inkjet
prints and have been printed on Epson
UltaSmooth Fine Art paper (250 g⁄m or2

500 g⁄m ) using Ultrachrome K3 inks and

2

an Epson Stylus Pro 7800. All dimensions

given are those of the image area.
 Blue Plate 4597
16x24 inches, 2010
 Blue Plate 4737
16x24 inches, 2010
 Blue Plate 4553
16x24 inches, 2010
 Blue Plate 4637
16x24 inches, 2010
 Blue Plate 4816
16x24 inches, 2010
Cathrine’s Window
22x47.7 inches, 2010
 Red Gray Grid 1
22x33 inches, 2009
 Red Gray Grid 2
22x33 inches, 2009
CURRICULUM VITAE
DANIEL G. HILL
Born 1956, Providence, RI
Lives and works in New York City
Solo Exhibitions
2010 Print; Melville House, Brooklyn, NY
2009 Digital Painting; Koussevitzky Gallery, Berkshire
Community College, Pittsfield, MA
2004 Into the Light; Square One Gallery, New York, NY
1997 Paintings and Collages; Wilmer Jennings Gallery
at Kenkeleba, New York, NY
1988 Daniel G. Hill; Koussevitzky Gallery, Berkshire
Community College, Pittsfield, MA
Selected Group Exhibitions
2008 AAA: Tribute to Esphyr Slobodkina; The Painting
Center, NY, NY
2007 Project Studio Artists, 2006–2007; The Classroom
at PS122 Gallery, NY, NY
Continuum: In Celebration of the 70th Anniversary
of AAA; St. Peter’s College Art Gallery, O’Toole
Library, Jersey City, NJ
2005 Optical Simulations; Yellow Bird Gallery,
Newburgh, NY, Curated by Jill Conner
2000 Toward the New; Hillwood Art Museum, Long
Island University, C.W. Post Campus, Brookvale, NY
Hunter College Faculty Exhibition; Hunter College
Art Galleries, NY, NY
1998 The White Painting; Katarina Rich Perlow Gallery,
NY, NY
Small Works VI; Parsons School of Design, NY, NY
1997 Abstraction Index; organized by Vincent Longo and
Laura Sue Phillips, Condeso/Lawler Gallery, NY, NY
1 : ONE; curated by Jeanette Cole and Carol
Struve, Herter Art Gallery, University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, MA
1996 Fourteen Days—A Salon; Room, NY, NY
Systemic Disorder; 55 Mercer Gallery, NY, NY
Small Works V; Parsons School of Design, NY, NY
Hunter College Faculty Exhibition; Hunter College
Art Galleries, NY, NY
1994 Mass Exposure; TRIBECA 148 Gallery, NY, NY
1992 Salon—More Than a Group Show; Art in General,
NY, NY
The Neurotic Art Show II: The Return of the
Repressed; Artists Space, NY, NY
1991 Physicality: An Exhibition on Color Dimensionality
in Painting; curated by George Hofmann, Hunter
College Art Galleries, NY, NY
The First Decade: A Celebration of the MFA
Program; Hunter College Art Galleries, NY, NY
1990 Local Modern; Chandler Gallery, Wellfleet, MA
Geometry on Site; Soho Center for Visual Artists,
NY, NY
1989 Collection ‘89; Virginia Lynch Gallery, Tiverton, RI
Artists at Hunter; Voorhees Gallery, NY, NY
1985 Four Artists; Parasol, Sag Harbor, NY
1983 New Artists; Bertha Urdang Gallery, NY, NY
Terminal New York; Brooklyn Army Terminal,
Brooklyn, NY
1980 Centennial Exhibition of Sculpture; Providence Art
Club, Providence, RI
Selected Collections
The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, AR, donation of
Sarah-Ann and Werner H. Kramarsky
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, NY
Parasol Press, Ltd., NY
Prudential Insurance Company of America, NJ
Fellowships & Awards Organizational Affiliations
2006 Project Studio Recipient, Painting Space 122, NY, NY American Abstract Artists, member since 1997
1996 Project Studio Recipient, Painting Space 122, NY, NY College Art Association, member since 1997
1993 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in
Painting Teaching Positions
1990 Artist Grant, Artists Space, NY, NY, in support of 2005–present
1990 exhibition at Soho Center for Visual Artists Assistant Professor, Parsons The New School for
1986 Batchelor (Ford) Summer Faculty Fellowship, Design, New York, NY
College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 2001–2005
1983 William Graf Travel Scholarship, Hunter College, Full-Time Faculty Member, Parsons The New
City University of New York, NY, NY School for Design
1995–2001
Bibliography Part-Time Faculty Member, Parsons School of
Marquis Who’s Who, Publisher, Who’s Who in American Art Design
Eshoo, Amy, editor; 560 Broadway: A New York Drawing 1990
Collection at Work, 1991–2006; Yale University Press, Lecturer in the Visual Arts, Princeton University,
New Haven and London; 2008 Princeton, NJ
Gwirtzman, Lisa; Art New England; review of exhibition at 1987–2001
the Koussevitzky Gallery; February, 1989 Adjunct Assistant Professor, Hunter College, City
Hofmann, George; Physicality: An Exhibition on Color University of New York, NY, NY
Dimensionality in Painting; exhibition catalogue; 1991 1985–1987
Keane, Dan; Living History; NY Arts Magazine; Assistant Professor of Art, College of the Holy
November/December 2005, Vol. 10, No.11/12; Cross, Worcester, MA
http://nyartsmagazine.com/; review of exhibition at the
Yellow Bird Gallery Education
Long, Robert; East Hampton Star; review of exhibition at MFA, Hunter College, City University of New York, New
Parasol; August 8, 1985 York, NY
Price, Dr. Joan Webster; Toward the New: American BA, Magna cum Laude, Brown University, Providence, RI
Abstract Artists; catalogue of exhibition, Hillwood Art
Museum, 2000
Reid, Calvin; MANUAL: Art in General 1992 and 1993;
catalogue of exhibitions; 1993
Wurmfeld, Sanford; The First Decade of the MFA Program
1981-1991; exhibition catalogue; 1991