20/20 Vision

The Art of Contemporary University Printmaking

Leslie Koptcho

Printmaking processes mirror life processes. Like life, there exist layers of complexity, variety and almost always contradiction and complication. This visual polemic, inherently existent in nature and ourselves, is central to my work.

Exploring printmaking’s potential to replicate, refine, and generate surprising mutations can be likened to the scientist’s quest to understand natures’ most intriguing mysteries. The breadth of my creative work reflects a directed effort to explore such issues through the filter of a dynamic, very “alive” process. While debates rage regarding what life is and when it might begin, two skills are essential: the ability to replicate and the ability to create order. This is why the conceptual, and very physical, connection between matrix and image best records my view of the world. An individual, like a matrix, can be worked up, or worked upon, reflecting life as an ongoing process. Much like the human genome, “a record of the past is etched into our genes,” the print matrix can be seen as a fundamental filament or template for creation, the key concept of a single self mediated core that represents the building block of life. Life then indeed hangs by the thread of repetition.

My current work focuses on skin as a metaphor for identity and the fragile boundary between the outer world of physical appearance and the interior one of private and psychic complexity. As a medium focused on making more of the same, it begs into question the notion of a single identity or entity. I purposefully work in comprehensive series to visually explore and utilize the aspects of comparison and empathy in understanding the question of what is an individual? The impressions I create are considered “a kin” to one another, as humans we are like and unlike each other.