Cornflake — CMYK Still Life Screenprint

Oli Fowler Art

£200.00 GBP

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24 in stock

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The Work

CMYK is everywhere — every magazine cover, every billboard, every box of cereal. Yellow, magenta, cyan, black. The same four colours that built the visual language of the modern world. But pulled by hand through screens, layer by layer, it becomes something else entirely.

Started with a cornflake. One cornflake, photographed against white. The kind of subject matter that would have sent the pop artists running in 1962 — too mundane, too British, not enough cultural charge. But that's exactly why it works now. No borrowed glamour. No art historical baggage. Just the thing itself, pulled through screens until it becomes something else.

Five screens total. Yellow, magenta, cyan, black — then a spot colour to lift it clear of the obvious. This isn't computer printing translated to screens. It's hand-pulled CMYK that knows what it is. Each separation built by eye, not algorithm. Each layer changing everything that came before it. You can see where each colour begins and ends if you look close enough. That's not a flaw. That's the point.

The process strips everything back. CMYK forces you to think in separations — how yellow sits against cyan, where magenta bleeds into black, what happens when they all land on the same sheet of paper. No delete key. No layers panel. No undo. Just ink, squeegee, paper, and the knowledge that you can't fix it digitally later.

This isn't kitchen art trying to match your tiles. It's a still life that happens to live in the same world as breakfast. The kind of print that works because it doesn't try too hard — contemporary without chasing trends, accessible without dumbing down. Pop art sensibilities applied to the most ordinary subject imaginable. Warhol would have painted Campbell's soup. This generation gets cornflakes.

The beauty is in the restraint. One object. Five colours. Nothing more than it needs to be. No conceptual framework to decode, no cultural references to chase down. Just the strange alchemy that happens when you take something utterly familiar and push it through a process that makes you see it fresh. The mundane made monumental through repetition, precision, and the particular quality of ink on paper that no screen can replicate.

Details

5-layer CMYK hand-pulled screenprint with spot colour, 500 x 700mm. Limited edition of 100, signed and embossed. Sold unframed.

Process

Each print pulled by hand in the studio. Five screens, five passes, five chances to get it right or start again. The CMYK separations built up layer by layer, with that final spot colour bringing everything into focus. Registration marks barely visible at the edges — the only evidence of how many times this paper passed under the squeegee.

For

Print collectors who understand that the best contemporary work often starts with the most ordinary subjects. Anyone who knows the difference between decoration and something that lasts. People who want work that can anchor a room without announcing itself from across the street.