Bad at Sports Episode 917: Two Palms and Alex Slattery

 

This week, we print big or go home. Bad at Sports cast their eyes to New York from the safe confines of the Chicago Architectural Biennial booth at EXPO 2025 to talk with the legendary Two Palms studio in the guise of Alex Slattery. If you've ever stood slack-jawed in front of a monoprint the size of a small car or a woodblock cut so large it needed its own logistics plan, chances are Two Palms was behind it.

Since the 1990s, David Lasry and company have been redefining what printmaking can be—working with artists like Carroll Dunham, Elizabeth Peyton, Mel Bochner, Cecily Brown, Terry Winters, Chris Ofili, Dana Schutz, Richard Prince, Chuck Close, Jeff Koons, and yes, even channeling the ghost of Andy Warhol. From delicate gestures to total madness with ink and paper, the studio's collaborations are as unpredictable as they are radical.

We talk risk, scale, failure, and discovery—the alchemy of artist–printer collaborations that make Two Palms a force in contemporary art. Along the way we wander through stories of impossible woodblocks, ink disasters turned into triumphs, and why printmaking might just be the most punk medium of them all.

So pour a glass, sharpen your barens, and get ready to nerd out about the future of prints.

 

Two Palms https://www.twopalms.us/

@twopalmsnyc

 

Name-Drop 

• Carroll Dunham — https://www.presenhuber.com/artists/carroll-dunham#tab:slideshow

• Elizabeth Peyton — https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/elizabeth-peyton

• Mel Bochner — http://www.melbochner.net/

• Cecily Brown — https://gagosian.com/artists/cecily-brown/

• Terry Winters —https://www.terrywinters.org/

• Chris Ofili — https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/chris-ofili/survey

• Dana Schutz — https://www.davidzwirner.com/artists/dana-schutz

• Richard Prince — http://www.richardprince.com/

• Chuck Close — https://www.pacegallery.com/artists/chuck-close/

• Jeff Koons — https://www.jeffkoons.com/

• Two Palms — https://www.twopalms.us/

• Marilyn Minter — https://www.twopalms.us/featured-works/marilyn-minter

• Stanley Whitney — https://www.twopalms.us/featured-works/stanley-whitney

• Ana Benaroya — https://www.twopalms.us/featured-works/ana-benaroya

• David Paul Lasry — https://www.nga.gov/artists/21067-david-paul-lasry

• Alex Slattery — https://www.instagram.com/alexslattery/

• EXPO CHICAGO - https://www.expochicago.com/

• Chicago Architectural Biennial 6 - https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/

Institutions that love these prints:

• Whitney Museum of American Art — https://whitney.org/

• MoMA — https://www.moma.org/

• The Met — https://www.metmuseum.org/