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Louis Buhl & Co. is proud to announce a limited print edition with Chicago-based artist Karl Wirsum titled Unshackled Bye You. Wirsum first came to prominence in the mid-1960s as a founding member of the Hairy Who. His paintings and drawings combine a graphic sensibility–vivid, flat colors, simplified cartoon-like figures–with a sense of humor evident in the works themselves and also in titles that second guess and play with words. The work is characterized by visceral imagery and a surrealist quality that lends his figures a wonderful sense of movement. Wirsum remarks on his process, "I think about what part of the body it is [I'm drawing] and how I can make some association to it but bring a strong abstraction." The abstraction in these works often comes about as jarring movements or forms. The artist's attention to movement is not only evident in his figures, but in his ability to move between media as well.

This limited edition print is 7-color hand-pulled screenprint on Mohawk Superfine UltraWhite, 160 lb cover. The 19h x 24w inch print is deckled, numbered and signed by the artist.

“My characters are alive...On completion of the drawing, the character hops out of this two-dimensional paper confines and achieves a standing position on top of the board. He then hops off the table, onto the floor, running into a mouse hole in the wall or some other convenient portal that times him into a cartoon environment … That would be the way I perceive the images that I create, hoping there will be a long run on Broadway for them, so they are spared from the production being closed in the first week and their being sucked back into the ink bottle.” - Karl Wirsum

His work has been featured in numerous institutional exhibitions including the The Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago.