Risograph Printed

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  • Diogenes        Shoboshobo        Books / Artists’ Books        $25.00
  • The Riso Book : San Francisco        Anthony Discenza, Vincent Fecteau, Mitzi Pederson        Books / Artists’ Books        $60.00
  • Gelatology        Sara Maragotto, Caterina Gadelli and Matteo Baratto        Books / Artists’ Books        $22.00
  • Everyone Else is Younger and More Talented #4        Hannah K. Lee        Books / Artists’ Books        $10.00
  • Wind Tunnel Bulletin        Haseeb Ahmed, Florian Dombois, and Kaspar König, editors        Periodicals / Artists’ Books        $7.00
  • Original Risographies        work-form and Studio Operative        Books / Artists’ Books        $22.00
  • F Magazine        Adam Marnie and F Magazine        Books / Artists’ Books        $15.00
  • Two Lakes        Deborah Bower, Annette Knol and Amelia Bande        Books / Artists’ Books        $16.00
  • SPRTS        Endless Editions        Periodicals / Zines        $20.00
  • Risoprint nr. 009        Sigrid Calon        Editions / Prints        $65.00
  • Place And        Suzanna Zak        Books / Zines        $19.00
  • The Riso Book : Los Angeles        Edgar Arceneaux, Gala Porras-Kim and Mungo Thomson        Books / Artists’ Books        $60.00
  • Thrown into the Sea        Franziska Brandt, Moritz Grünke and Gloria Glitzer        Books / Artists’ Books        $30.00
  • PLANTR        Wren McDonald        Books / Zines        $8.00
  • Printed at Home        Gerardo Madera        Books / Artists’ Books        $25.00
  • A Catalogue of Blue Chairs        Jeremy Jams        Books / Zines        $10.00
  • Forming        Sto Len        Books / Artists’ Books        $25.00
  • PAYSANNES        Anais Favier        Books / Artists’ Books        $20.00
  • Cinders Artist of the Month Fanzine        Morgan Blair, Brian Chippendale, Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels and Aidan Koch        Books / Zines        $10.00

RISO-PRINTING: AN OVERVIEW

The Risograph – a plain-looking, clunky machine first released in Japan in 1986 by the Riso Kagaku Corporation – was initially developed as an alternative to other widespread copying processes. Marketed to churches, offices and schools, the Risograph offered a high-quality, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly option ideal for large-volume printing.

As an office standard the Risograph lost out to the photocopier, but the possibilities of riso-printing were adopted by a generation of artists and independent publishers who would give the machine new purpose. Working with the strengths and limitations of the technology, artists began creating posters, zines and artists’ books that embraced a lo-fi, pixelated aesthetic and allowed for endless experimentation with color, saturation and registration.

The Risograph shares a legacy with Mimeograph printing, another low cost ink-and-stencil printing method favored by artists. Many artists made their first fanzines with Mimeo technology, and as the process was gradually replaced by the photocopier and offset printer in the early ‘60s, the machine only increased in popularity as a tool for artists. Many of the era’s most significant artists’ periodicals, literary journals and other conceptual artists’ book projects were Mimeograph-printed. The resurgence of Riso is perhaps likewise tinged with nostalgia (though maybe not with any particular art historical referent in mind) as technology often becomes viable artistically only after it becomes outmoded in a more general sense.

The Risograph, in a most basic sense, offers a return to tactility. The printed ink has a distinct material quality and sits raised on the paper. The process is deliberate, affordable, and inherently modest, and brings the production back into the artists’ studio and an intimate network of collaborators. The democratic possibility of mass-printing – in quantities that are responsive to the demand – as well as the close creative oversight afforded to artists at every step along the way, embodies a set of new political concerns important to this generation of bookmakers.

PRINTING PROCESS

The quality of a Risograph print is somewhere between a photocopy and screen print – and like a screen print the image originates through a stencil duplication process. The artwork is scanned or transferred by computer to the machine, which then burns it onto a thin plastic sheet. This creates a ‘master’ copy, which gets wrapped around a drum and rotated at high speed so that the ink is pushed through the screen and onto the paper.

In preparation for print, the image needs to be split into separate greyscale PDF files, one for each color. There is no need to halftone the artwork files, as the Risograph machine creates a halftone automatically. Each color is then printed one at a time onto the paper. Until recently, A3 (11.7 × 16.5 in.) was the largest size a Risograph could print to but recently an A2 (16.5 × 23.4 in.) version was released.

The inks used are liquid and all fully translucent. They do not follow the traditional Pantone color chart system and layering them with other colors, as well as using different paper stock, can change their color quite significantly. Traditionally, Risographs were not designed to print more than one or two colors, and there will often be a degree of mis-registration when printing several colors. These aspects of the printing process can lead to some very surprising and beautiful results, and add to the inherent charm of the Risograph print.

Checklist
  1. Adam Marnie and F Magazine
    F Magazine
    Brooklyn, NY: F Magazine, 2014
    250
    Out of stock
  2. Anthony Discenza, Vincent Fecteau, Mitzi Pederson
    The Riso Book : San Francisco
    San Francisco, CA: Colpa Press, Publication Studio and Kadist, 2014
    100
    Out of stock
  3. Endless Editions
    SPRTS
    New York, NY: Endless Editions, 2014
    Out of stock
  4. Gerardo Madera
    Printed at Home
    New York, NY: Common Satisfactory Standard, 2013
    120
    Out of stock
  5. Morgan Blair, Brian Chippendale, Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels and Aidan Koch
    Cinders Artist of the Month Fanzine
    Brooklyn, NY: Cinders Gallery and Cinders Gallery, 2013
    100
    Out of stock
  6. Jeremy Jams
    A Catalogue of Blue Chairs
    Brooklyn, NY: Jeremy Jams, 2014
    100
    Out of stock
  7. Deborah Bower, Annette Knol and Amelia Bande
    Two Lakes
    Berlin, Germany: Publishing Puppies, 2014
    75
    $16.00
  8. Sto Len
    Forming
    Brooklyn, NY: Cinders Gallery, 2014
    66
    $25.00
  9. Suzanna Zak
    Place And
    London, England: Fourteen-Nineteen, April 2013
    Out of stock
  10. Shoboshobo
    Diogenes
    Paris, France: Shoboshobo, 2013
    10
    $25.00
  11. Sigrid Calon
    Risoprint nr. 009
    Tilburg, The Netherlands: Sigrid Calon, 2014
    50
    Out of stock
  12. Sara Maragotto, Caterina Gadelli and Matteo Baratto
    Gelatology
    Bologna, Italy: Studio Fludd, 2014
    150
    Out of stock
  13. Wren McDonald
    PLANTR
    Orlando, FL: Wren McDonald, 2014
    155
    Out of stock
  14. Edgar Arceneaux, Gala Porras-Kim and Mungo Thomson
    The Riso Book : Los Angeles
    San Francisco, CA: Colpa Press, Publication Studio and Kadist, April 2014
    100
    Out of stock
  15. Haseeb Ahmed, Florian Dombois, and Kaspar König, editors
    Wind Tunnel Bulletin
    Zürich, Switzerland: Zürcher Hochschule der Künste (ZHdK), 2013
    Out of stock
  16. work-form and Studio Operative
    Original Risographies
    London, UK: Studio Operative, 2014
    500
    Out of stock
  17. Franziska Brandt, Moritz Grünke and Gloria Glitzer
    Thrown into the Sea
    Berlin, Germany: Gloria Glitzer, 2013
    65
    $30.00
  18. Anais Favier
    PAYSANNES
    Montreal, Canada: Auto-Edition, 2013
    100
    Out of stock
Last updated 7/10/2014
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