SOLO SHOW 2026
SIGHTLINES
Minneapolis-based artist Margaret Buchen presents a solo exhibition of prints and mixed media works inspired by cinema and focusing on the charged emotion of the close-up.

Margaret Buchen will present Sightlines—a solo exhibition of screen prints, monotypes and intaglio prints—on view through August 30 at The Tiny Gallery, 225 SE Main Street, Minneapolis, MN, 55414. The Tiny Gallery is a storefront gallery next to Look + See Eye Care, and the work can be viewed from the street. Gallery hours: Monday – Sunday, 8 a.m. – 9 p.m.

Buchen takes inspiration from moving images on film and video and is fascinated by the way such images convey visual information. Hoping to capture the myriad visual effects used in cinema, she takes still photographs of moving images and uses this source material to create a kind of portraiture for our media-saturated age.

She is particularly interested in the charged emotions captured in extreme close-ups versus the indirect expression of emotion in our era of personal communication devices. Often her subjects—either two people or a single person with a self-reflection—seem to be conversing. Some works include text; in others, the subject(s) may be obscured by noise, glitches, or lines and shapes that mimic the way images are distorted by electronic transmission. In Buchen’s art, traditional film and digital technologies create a world that absorbs us all, but interpersonal communication is obscured by layers of media.

Artist Bio:
Margaret Buchen is a printmaker and art educator who has been working in Minneapolis since early 2024. Buchen is a member of Highpoint Center for Printmaking and teaches art as an adjunct instructor at Concordia University. From 2006 – 2024 she taught printmaking and art foundations at Harper College, Palatine, Illinois, and acted as Art Curator of the Harper College Art Collection. She has shown her work in more than seventy group and solo exhibitions, including Eye Contact, 2025, a solo exhibition at Concordia Art Gallery, Concordia University, St. Paul; All for Print, Print for All, 2025, Harold Washington Library Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; and Committed to Print, a National Invitational Printmakers Exhibition, 2024, Prospectus Art Gallery, Chicago, Illinois. Her work is included in the Harold Washington Library Special Collections/Chicago Printmakers Guild Archives, and many private and public collections.

More information:
https://margaretbuchen.com
@buchenmargaret

ARTIST STATEMENT
My current work takes inspiration from the mediums of film, video, and digital video. I am fascinated by the way the moving image conveys visual information. I make “still” pictures (Drawings, Prints, Paintings) to play with the rich visual effects I observe. I am particularly interested in personal communication in this era of media-saturated culture.

These representational works are appropriated from film stills. The main body of the work is a kind of portraiture derived from composites of film stills. This refers to the closeup shots often seen in film to establish communication between two people. Some works include text; a few words of dialogue spoken by the subjects. In other works, the representation is obscured by “noise,” or lines and shapes resembling image pixilation. This mimics the way images in film, video and digital video are affected by electronic transmission.

These still pictures address the power of media. Traditional film and digital technologies create a world that we are drawn to and absorbed by. As a viewer of this mediated world, I interpret the layers of imagery that surround us.