Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Third Seal (R 6:5)

In these four large-scale chromatic prints, Ethiopian-born American artist Julie Mehretu combines photogravure with traditional intaglio printmaking techniques. The underlying images are press photographs documenting recent anti-immigration protests in the United States, which Mehretu has digitally altered to the point of being unrecognizable, retaining only their "DNA." These base images dissolve into complex compositions of frantic marks and erasures that the artist etched onto copper plates using various printmaking methods. 

Since the mid-2010s, Mehretu has worked with several leading print studios to push the technical boundaries of what is possible, for example by increasing the number of press runs to create unprecedented overlays of forms and effects. The subtitles of the four works refer to the broken seals in the biblical Book of Revelation, evoking the current era of upheaval marked by a global pandemic, police violence, and the resurgence of authoritarian forms of fascism. This constellation of gestures and forms—whose relationships appear indeterminate and uncertain—metabolizes and interrogates the world’s violence, offering instead a third, suspended space, an "in-between" marked by the possibility of something else.