You're Welcome & I'm Sorry

In March 2021, artists Aziz + Cucher approached Powerhouse Arts to produce a series of unique prints entitled “You’re Welcome and I’m Sorry”. The artist duo was initially introduced to Powerhouse Arts through Virtual Consultations where they consulted with Print Director Luther Davis regarding methodologies for translating photography of performance into large-scale prints.

The duo’s interdisciplinary practice includes video, photography, printmaking, digital animation, sculpture, and large-scale jacquard tapestries. Their work reflects on the boundaries of identity, questions of reality and fiction, globalization, post-human conditions, and the intersections between the social, the biological, and the technological. Their work searches for visual poetics that can express both the anxieties and expectations of living in such a moment.

For this project, Powerhouse Arts’ print team produced three large-format prints on canvas measuring 59 inches by 76 inches. The original material was sourced from a video installation presented in 2019 at MASS MoCA. The imagery is collaged and then outputted on canvas by a combined process of large-format Epson digital printing and screen printing. The colors were applied via four large screens measuring 120 by 73 inches frame size — the largest offered by the Print Shop. The process required several passes of ink to achieve the desired texture and sheen. Metal leaf was applied to the surface of the works by the artists as a final element.

The works will be exhibited at Gazelli Art House in London in 2022.

Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher have collaborated as Aziz + Cucher since meeting at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1990. Regarded as pioneers in digital imaging and post-photography, their interdisciplinary practice spans digital photography, video, sculpture, animation, and textiles. Their breakthrough Dystopia series (1994-95) featured digitally manipulated portraits with sealed facial orifices, examining dehumanization and technology's impact on identity. Their work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, MASS MoCA, New Museum, SFMOMA, and LACMA, with collections including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. Recipients of multiple Pollock-Krasner Foundation grants, they are faculty members at Parsons School of Design and based in Brooklyn, New York.