In their second one-person exhibition with the Proxy Gallery, Edelsbrunner is showing Monoprints 29, 30, 34. These are small casts in off-white polymer made from plastic molds that usually hold consumer objects. The original forms are normally concave, in order to hold the objects, while the casts are solid, I.e the cavity where the object used to be, is now filled in.

Even though casting and printing imply an “original” or a “negative” from which one can make several reproductions, these works are “monoprints;” the process of the casting destroys the original plastic mold, so only one cast object is produced each time. Thus, the work is, paradoxically, both a reproduction and a unique original. We think of what it is, and we also think of where it may have come from.

Whereas previous monoprints of Edelsbrunner were cast in pastels (lavender, aqua, pink,) these 2025 works in off-white color masquerade as pure form but are indeed indexical of the process of their engineering and the structural integrity of plastic. In addition, they have the “gestalt” quality of minimalist sculpture: simple form, one material, instantaneous perception, lack of different parts. The pieces are solid forms without interiority, without expressive technique, and with only the narrative of their construction. By extension, they also call attention to the environment of the Proxy Gallery as a white cube, the color and form conventionally considered “neutral.” The pristine white walls of modernist galleries are supposed to function as the non-distracting background against which the Artwork is shown off. These sculptural monoprints foreground that neutrality in order to challenge the separation between context and content.

Annetta Kapon for Proxy Gallery
(photo Annetta Kapon)