I spent most of last weekend at Platoon Kunsthalle in Gangnam for their Urban Void project. In collaboration with Beyond Art, who made for the event, Platoon have been championing Korean and international artists at their venue for approximately the last week.
As well as spending Saturday night at Platoon’s rooftop party, I also took part in a silkscreen workshop on Sunday (#hungover) with Vault 49, a New York media company who specialise in creating authentic art for ad campaigns. They had been invited mainly to create a 1000 square ft. mural within the venue, which you can see in the pictures at the bottom of the page.
The workshop was for beginners, luckily, since I find even fingerpainting a challenge. The tricky parts of screen printing had already been prepared, but we were still introduced to the methods Vault 49 had used through this video.
Vault 49 explained that you can print the design you intend to use on a sheet of film by using any type of printer. They had already fixed the designs onto screens for us, but spent a little time taping the edges to ensure there was no seepage from the paint. The screen was then placed on top of a sheet of paper before the class was shown how to push paint through the screen onto the paper with a wooden squeegee. Phase 1 of the process was complete.
We would be building our artwork through screen printing three times in all, using three different designs. Vault 49 had previously explained how they usually used water-based paints and how there may be some problems with the oil-based paints that we were using. They were right. The paint melted through the plastic containers they were being kept in, resulting in spillage and a little waiting around time to clean up.
After repeating step 1, with a new design, we applied a layer of red paint through the screen to create the final result.
Success.
Here are some shots from Urban Void at Platoon
Words and photography by Loren.
