Chance Operations:
Monoprints, Make Ready, Test Prints, and Artist Proofs

Exhibition Prospectus

Synopsis: 

This small group exhibition celebrates printmakers who use overprinting on test prints as an outlet to create original, one of a kind monoprints. The salon-style exhibition of works on paper features individuals and collaborators working in letterpress, screenprinting, and risography, including 

Melissa Dettloff (Detroit, MI), Francisco Ramirez / Bureau Of Print (Milwaukee, WI) Rachel Delmotte (Detroit, MI), Fatherless (Rockford, IL / London, UK), Maddy Underwood (Nashville / Athens, GA), Stacey Malasky (Detroit, MI), Angela Davis Fegan / Too Much Press (Chicago, IL), Daniel MacAdam / Crosshair (Chicago, IL), Chris Fritton / The Itinerant Printer (Buffalo, NY), and Dennis & Christina Jacobs / Arsenal Handicraft (Madison Heights, MI).

 

Concepts & Methodologies:

 

Chance operations, or aleatorism, is a method of composing art work that leaves a portion of the design decision to chance.  Letting go of control in the act of art making can create new connections within a work, causing an image to be seen differently or a text to be read in a new context.

 

In printmaking, test prints, artist proofs, and make-ready prints are an expected by-product of preparing a work to be editioned. When the artist chooses a chance operation of purposeful embellishment or overprinting to create a new, one of a kind work, the edition is abandoned and the monoprint becomes a singular, unrepeatable piece.The resulting layers of imagery laid atop one another create layers of meaning, palimpsests of overlapping color and texture, which tie together stories that were once seemingly unrelated.

 

As an exhibition, Chance Operations celebrates the anti-edition, an exploration of the range printmaking can take when we eschew the perfect, painstakingly repeatable image and honor the parts of the process many artists try to hide - the states, the proofs, the mechanical press malfunctions, the fingerprints- and see the layers as a new composition, greater than a sum of their parts.  

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Traditions & Influences: 

Aleatoric compositions in music date back to the 15th century (contemporary to Gutenberg’s movable type printing press), and have been widely embraced in book arts and printmaking, most notably in movements like Dada, Fluxus, Surrealism, Situationism, and Punk/DIY Ephemera. Much of the lexicon was conceived in the 1963 artist’s book An Anthology of Chance Operations, edited by La Monte Young and designed by George Maciunas, and featured work by John Cage, Walter De Maria, Yoko Ono, Dick Higgins, Ray Johnson, Robert Morris, Nam June Paik, and Dieter Rotch, among others.

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Media Contact:

Elizabeth Isakson-Dado

elizabeth.isakson.dado@gmail.com

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Exhibition Timeline: September 18, 2025 -December 19, 2025

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Opening Reception: Thursday, September 18, 6-8pm 

Drop In & Make a Print Workshop: Saturday, October 18, 11am-3pm (info)

Collaborative Posters with Test Prints Workshop: Sunday, November 9, 12pm-5pm (register)

It's Not a Mistake, it's a Monoprint (Print Jam with POMPOM): Thursday, November 13, 5-8pm (info)

Closing Reception: Friday, December 19, 6-8pm

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