Matt Magee — Winter Pool, Mind Gap, and Lunar Lantern (2024)
Manneken Press’ second project with Matt Magee was released in March 2024. Winter Pool and Mind Gap take inspiration from Paul Klee’s 1924 painting Mask, translating its frontal, head-like oval form into flat, centralized shapes activated by internal matrices of rectangles. The white of the un-inked paper plays a central role: in Winter Pool it forms the internal blocks as negative space, while in Mind Gap the blocks appear as positive shapes floating within negative space. Magee transforms Klee’s motif into thought-bubble forms with udders, suggesting language and cognition in an indecipherable visual syntax.
Lunar Lantern originated as an ink drawing from 2017 and references the trilobite, an ancient marine arthropod. Its stacked, segmented form appears illuminated from within, with un-inked paper creating moon-like slices surrounded by purple pigment. Together, the prints evoke ritual objects that hold light, space, and time. All three works are aquatints on Rives BFK paper, printed in editions of 20.
Matt Magee — Plugs, Bugs and Drugs (2021)
Manneken Press’ first collaboration with Arizona-based artist Matt Magee was released in June 2021. Drawing on hard-edged abstraction and art-historical precedents, Magee conceived Plugs, Bugs and Drugs as an abstract poetic triptych exploring language, iteration, and processes of stacking and sequencing. Using templates and measuring tools, Magee drew directly onto copper plates, leaving generous margins that centralize the imagery and lend it symbolic weight.
The forms and titles are suggestive rather than descriptive, encouraging associative reading rather than fixed interpretation. The prints are aquatints, hand-printed in color on Somerset Velvet Soft White paper, in editions of 20.