Recent Works by Ian Short
In the Frame Shop Gallery
January 12 through May 4, 2007

A reception for this exhibit will be held
Friday, January 19, 2007 at 8 p.m.

Master printmaker Ian Short presents a selection of new works consisting of abstract drawings digitally reproduced as inkjet prints. A self-proclaimed “surrealist, pseudo-Freudian, existential, cubist, abstract expressionist, living in a time warp and suffering delusions of grandeur,” Short also suggests that he is a post-modernist. A main tenet of Postmodernism is that original images are reproduced in various forms all the time in our culture. The image we see is often a mere copy of the pristine original. Short’s work is postmodern because he deliberately layers his art-making process in order to consciously separate the final product from his “original” drawing. His prints begin as drawings made from colored pencils and oil pastels, which he then photographs and digitally manipulates into the final product.

Short uses concepts that emerged in 20th century movements such as Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. He employs the Surrealist principle of spontaneously producing art in “response to the moment.” His images are puzzle-like. Short works to “create ambiguity and contradiction between negative and positive shapes,” and to create different spatial planes on the two-dimensional flat paper and canvas. His works are like the Abstract Expressionists in their emotional intensity; yet his abstract images are only occasionally recognizable to the viewer. Short bases his work on landscapes and still lifes, juxtaposing “abstract images of the organic and anthropomorphic with the architectonic or geometric.” Ultimately, he creates a world within these small prints in which many theories, media, and vocabularies of imagery are intermeshed—a world that becomes strangely cohesive despite its chaos.

Ian Short received his BFA at Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, in 1958, and his MFA at University of Illinois, Urbana, in 1961. He has taught at Kent State University, Ohio, and Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where he also served as the chair of the art department from 1993-1996. He is the co-founder of the non-profit art organization Artists Image Resource in Pittsburgh.