“Process is foundational to my entire work.”

In Untitled, 2024, Grabner’s gingham grid is magnified and asymmetrical, cropped along embossed edges. Kozo and hemp blend paper applied with Chine-collé introduces organic texture to an exacting impression. Since 2015, Michelle Grabner has re-introduced the gingham pattern into her paintings and relief sculptures. Often working in oil on burlap, her approach is iterative and exploratory. The artist has said that process means repetition, contemplation, and the manipulation of materials as a reflection on the patterns of daily life. It also means to pick apart what she considers systems of order.

A text accompanying a 2023 survey of her work at James Cohan Gallery offers that Grabner imbues “the Minimalist grid with political as well as formal content,” and “recasts, represents, and repeats objects from domestic life to uncover the power structures contained therein.” In this way, a gingham or burlap painting becomes a post-minimal grid, its brushy and impastoed surface physically laced with the artist’s values.

This print, however, appears at first tidy and linear. Yet throughout the edition’s 20 prints, small variables in paper, registry, and impression can be traced but are nearly imperceptible. The relief print is the result of labor and systems, but to both it remains un-tethered, with slight moments of resistance and deviation.