Somebody Else's Prints

SF GATE | Bruce Conner's Many Editions of Self in San Jose

Bruce Conner: Somebody Else’s Prints” at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art reacquaints us with a rebarbative spirit encountered so seldom in today’s culture that people seem no longer to miss it.

Those in the contemporary art world caught up in the scramble for recognition need the example of works by Conner (1933-2008) such as the 1965 lithographs “Thumb Print (April 26, 1965)” and “This Space Reserved for June Wayne.”

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DAILYSERVING | Bruce Conner: Somebody Else’s Prints @ the Ulrich Museum of Art

Sympathetic magic—the use of a surrogate object to magically influence the person or circumstance it represents—has long been one of my favorite subjects. The Ulrich Museum of Art’s current exhibition, Bruce Conner: Somebody Else’s Prints, is an impressive collection of prints, etchings, and lithographs, a number of which Conner attributed to pseudonyms. The show inventively chronicles the artist’s use of surrogate figures for a variety of political and conceptual gains. In the exhibition are works produced during his brief time as a student at Wichita State University[1], and also during his initial years in the Bay Area at Magnolia Editions, Kaiser Graphics, and Collectors Press. The result is a mix of fine art and commercially printed work that cheekily micromanages art-historical expectation.

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