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Louis Buhl & Co. is excited to announce the newest addition to our Salon exhibition space, a series of unique hand-embellished prints by Brooklyn-based artist Wendy White. For this project, White has manipulated a handful of prints from her edition A Piece of History, amalgamating advertisements, documentary photographs, and consumerist logos to create transformed works that introduce new visuals and applied techniques, making each one distinctly different from the next. Accompanying each print featured in the exhibition is a custom-designed frame, painted in yellow and accented with small black decals that epitomize White’s cheerfully rebellious disposition. 

*Please note that only a select number of prints come framed, however, a custom frame can be requested for any of the unframed works at an additional charge. 

The series of prints depict a sports car ad from the 70s set against a backdrop of mountains; an almost equally retro ‘Power-Up’ heart hangs above. Blurring the lines between the machine and the hand, the messy and clean, the mistake and the intentional, this series of hand-embellished prints continues White’s ongoing analysis of male dominance within society: "[the pieces are] both homage and critique of advertising and car culture, in which women are touted as prizes for owning sports cars. The [prints juxtapose] a vintage ad against a mountainous landscape, suggesting escape and referring to the myth of freedom, ownership, and conquest that surrounds the automobile. A pixelated black heart floats above, much like the symbol of health in video games or an 80s decal, representing hope and optimism — an attempt to recast the embedded narrative." 

White has spent the last few years gaining as much knowledge as possible about vintage cars, and is the owner of a 1972 Plymouth that she repairs and refurbished herself. It’s no surprise, then, that the culture — and the conflicted relationship to it that many women in the community must hold — pops into her work. While the misogynistic imagery in these ads is usually enough to make you roll your eyes, the text can be even worse, and White’s edition features a pitch pulled directly from the stone ages: “You not only get a car and a girl but a piece of history.” She appropriates this messaging, isolating and recontextualizing symbols until they take on an entirely new meaning.