If Walls Could Talk

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The New York Sun

Upon entering Replicate, a digital printing shop in Williamsburg, you could be forgiven for having a bit of a “Twilight Zone” moment. In the entry of the sunny, high-ceilinged, minimalist space, typical of the warehouses and converted lofts in the artist heavy neighborhood, sits an antique chair and a bearskin rug. Mirrors, decorative plates, and framed pastoral scenes hang on the walls, a scene reminiscent of a Victorian parlor. It’s the wallpaper that draws these elements together, a green-blue background adorned with undulating tendrils and curlicues on one wall, and on the opposite another botanical-inspired pattern, this one in browns and yellows.


But nothing about this wallpaper is old. In fact, the wallpaper isn’t technically wallpaper at all, but “surface adhesions,” digital images that have been printed on a giant roll of sticky-backed paper. Printed on an enormous eight-color archival inkjet printer housed in the Williamsburg shop, the paper is easy to install and remove, and offers a refreshing new way to think about wall coverings.


“You can make wallpaper out of anything you want,” said Karyn Wiseman, 33, co-owner of Replicate. “You can use a sketch, a photograph, a collage, whatever. We can Photoshop it, boost the colors. Because it’s all digital, there are no limits.”


Ms. Wiseman, who has a background in branding and advertising, and her business partner, Zack Moreland, an architect, opened Replicate in May 2002 to “supply all the artists here,” Ms. Wiseman said, noting that at the time there was no such service offering high-end digital printing and imaging in the neighborhood.


The pair came up with the idea for the wall coverings last year as participants in Firststop, an October design event showcasing local Williamsburg talent. Ms. Wiseman and Mr. Moreland told customers and friends that they were looking for designs from artists that they could print as wallpaper. About 20 artists offered work. “This neighborhood is so tight, the word just spread,” Ms. Wiseman said.


They created a large-scale installation in Replicate’s shop, hanging strips of the artists’ designs – such as Cori Barton’s black-and-white line drawings of wigs – next to one another. “The response was amazing,” Ms. Wiseman said.


Ms. Wiseman now primarily works with Wook Kim, a graphic designer who created the 19th-century style designs currently up on Replicate’s walls. (Mr. Kim has a variety of designs available, from mauve patterns featuring peacocks to more simple ones in rust and blue with fine, feathery lines.) In the past year, Replicate has sold its “surface adhesion” paper to a handful of clients, most of whom requested a design by Mr. Kim. (Replicate charges $17 per square foot for the wall coverings, and $75 per hour for design and retouching work.)


To showcase the medium’s possibilities, Replicate featured installations in May on the shop’s walls by two artists whose work couldn’t be more different than Mr. Kim’s. Michael Bevilacqua, a painter who often relies on pop culture imagery (from punk bands to racecars and fashion labels), created his “wallpaper” by scanning in the image of the inside of a CD cover and layering and painting over the results.


KAWS, who made a name for himself as a New York graffiti artist in the 1990s, created his installation using graphic images of cartoon characters such as the Simpsons and Bugs Bunny in one colorful energetic scene. (Presently, Replicate is reprinting a 16-by-8-foot image of one of Mr. Bevilacqua’s pieces for the Miami Art Basel show in early December.)


“This can really free up the way you think of wallpaper. It doesn’t have to cover every wall; it doesn’t have to look a particular way,” Ms. Wiseman said. “You can think of wallpaper as a mural. You can do anything you want to it.”


The New York Sun

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