Wrinkle 1968 by Liliana Porter

Created in 1968 by Argentine artist Liliana Porter (born 1941), Wrinkle is a portfolio of ten photo-etchings that show the gradual crumpling of a piece of white paper, from an immaculate rectangle to a ball of waste. These prints are accompanied by a fictitious interview conducted by the Fluxus poet Emmett Williams with himself. Wrinkle is an important work from Porter’s time at the New York Graphic Workshop, which she co-founded in 1964 to promote the idea of printmaking as conceptual art.

This In Focus offers a fresh discussion of Wrinkle, looking at its relationship to dominant artistic languages of the 1960s, such as minimalism and conceptualism. It examines the themes of seriality, waste and anti-commercialism that the work raises, and discusses Porter’s literary influences, including Lewis Carroll and Jorge Luis Borges. It highlights Porter’s interest in the line separating reality from fiction, and analyses her work’s connection with Williams’s poetry, with its focus on collaboration, humour and the desire for art to be free from categorisation.

Published in May 2018, the project is authored by Sophie Halart (Universidad Alberto Hurtado) with a contribution by Allen Fisher (Manchester Metropolitan University).

This In Focus project was made possible through support from the Terra Foundation for American Art.

ISBN 978-1-84976-558-9