International Print Center

Edification value
Entertainment value
Should you go?
Time spent	23 minutes
Best thing I saw or learned	A couple of black and white, square, surreal architectural prints by Brandon Williams.  This project is not supposed to be about shopping for art for me, but I would totally like to own them.

Perched up on the fifth floor of an old industrial building in the middle of the High Line / Chelsea art gallery district is the International Print Center New York, a non-profit that puts on regular shows on the art of printmaking.

This is the first of likely several blurry “museum-or-not?” places on my list.  This was undoubtedly an exhibit; the show currently on view is called “Idols and Impossible Structures” and had a definite curatorial bent to it.  But the pieces were for sale, too.  So, if this is a museum, so is Pace or the Gagosian?  They put on amazing shows.  I guess the non-profitness of it puts it into the museum category, but like I said, it’s a blurry line.

Anyway, it’s a nice space, a little rough around the edges, lofty, huge windows, not too big, and it makes a nice contrast with the extremely, extremely polished high-end gallery spaces that most art-seekers visit in that neighborhood. 

The Idols and Impossible Structures show was  interesting, and featured a good variety of work, a lot of which had a surprising sense of humor about it.  A printed, “cut and fold it yourself” model of an old school telephone jack was great.  I bet most people under the age of 15 don’t have any idea what those things are.

Should you go?  I wouldn’t plan a special trip to go there, unless the current exhibition was of great interest to you.  But it would make a great part of an art day in Chelsea.

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