Gabriel Feld is an architect, an artist, and a teacher. He has been a professor at Rhode Island School of Design since 1990, serving as head of the architecture department (1997-2002) and chief critic of the European Honors Program in Rome (2014-16.) He has exhibited his work in Argentina, the United States, Italy, France, and China. He received his Architecture Diploma from the Universidad de Buenos Aires in 1980 and his Master in Architecture from Harvard University in 1988. Every summer he comes to Barga to study printmaking with Nick Kraczyna.
In 2014 I arrived to the Palazzetto Cenci in Rome as “chief critic” of RISD’s European Honors Program, and at some point I began to use the Bendini press at the Cenci. And I immediately fell in love with printmaking. First were monotypes, then multi-plate color etchings, and more recently lithographs. And while I came across extraordinary printmakers and teachers along the way, most of my education has been, is, experimentation.
I think of my prints as little poems without words. But more than conveying a message, they try to share a material experience, almost a tactile sensibility. They are constructed with different kinds of materials, some from everyday life–such as paper, string, nets, fabric, ribbons, and rubber bands–and others from nature in the city, like petals of fallen flowers, leaves, and twigs. Inspiration often comes from the traces we leave behind as we go about our lives. I am amazed by the power and beauty of those marks, many casual and unintended, ephemeral and evanescent. And to be candid, I could be perfectly happy with just looking at them. Yet, I do my prints as a way to further explore those observations and share them.
When I use the word “constructed” I don’t do it casually, since I think of printmaking as extension of my work as an architect, something like “architecture by other means” if you wish.
This exhibition at the Galleria Comunale di Barga brings together a series recent of visual experiments–monotypes, multi-plate color etchings, lithographs, cyanotypes, and watercolors– done in the US, Italy, Mexico, Italy and China. It is a sort of traveling diary, reflecting the impact of each place and circumstance.
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