Untitled (Imprint 93)
Untitled is Elizabeth Peyton's contribution to Imprint 93, the mail-art press Matthew Higgs ran out of London between 1993 and 1998, distributing more than fifty artists' editions to a small circle of friends and collaborators.
The zine reproduces a sequence of video-stills of Nirvana's Kurt Cobain performing in 1993, staple-bound and photocopied in black and white. It was first issued in 1995 on the occasion of Peyton's exhibition Drawings at the Prince Albert Public House in Brixton, organized by Cabinet Gallery; this copy is the second printing, produced by Printed Matter in 2018 in an edition of 100 plus 10 artist's proofs, on the occasion of an archival exhibition of the Imprint 93 project that originated at the Whitechapel Gallery.
Peyton became known in the early 1990s for intimate, often androgynous portraits of musicians, historical figures, and friends, rendered in a loose, romantic line. Cobain was a recurring subject in her painting and drawing of the period, and this zine's grainy, mediated stills sit alongside that body of work as a rawer, more disposable counterpart to it.
