The Art of the Remix

From a Robert Longo series printed for Frieze London to a tactile Vermeer at the Mauritshuis The Hague, fine art reproduction has moved well past the poster print. A group of experts discuss what today’s technologies make possible, and why the quality of the capture shapes everything that follows.

PARTICIPANTS

• Jamie McLennan, General Manager & Senior Sales Executive, Innvoke

• Ian Harker, Print production, Innvoke

• Erik Rex, Founder, Rex Dimensional

• Erik Norman, President, swissQprint America

• Royce Dodds, Marketing and Sales EU, Cruse 

• Michael Voight, Application Specialist, swissQprint America

MODERATED BY

• Heidi Thompson, Founder, Global Art Reproduction

In a recent roundtable, six specialists across the reproduction chain—scanning, printing, and technology providers—came together to discuss how advances in scanning and printing are expanding the possibilities of fine art reproduction. Their experiences illustrate how reproduction technology is enabling everything from long-term preservation and licensing to artistic experimentation and public accessibility.

Innvoke's entry into the art reproduction space began six years ago when the PA--based print studio bought its first swissQprint flatbed printer. At the time, they were mainly doing screen printing. Today, Innvoke is producing large-format fine art reproductions with raised texture, and collaborating with artists like abstract expressionist Robert Longo on work that was shown at galleries during Frieze London. 

A lot has changed for Innvoke in those six years.

Capture is everything

Like many artists wanting to document their work, Erik Rex of PA-based Rex Dimensional started with an iPhone. When he began selling paintings and needed archival-quality image files to license and reprint indefinitely, he began exploring higher-quality alternatives.

"I started looking at cameras and camera-based systems," he says. "And I was very dissatisfied with the field." In 2024, he found the Cruse scanner, a large-format device that captures not just color but the physical topography of a surface, encoding brushstroke depth and texture into a data file that can be reproduced in three dimensions.

With more than two decades of experience using the technology in the décor industry, Royce Dodds of Cruse draws a clear distinction between camera-based capture and scanner-based imaging. He notes, “With a camera, even a very good one, the result is a flat image file. Reproducing a large painting that way means stitching together hundreds of individual photographs, and you still don't have the depth and surface information required to reconstruct texture."

Michael Voight of swissQprint systems, supports customers working with digital scanners like Cruse, and is direct about where the process can fall apart: "If you do not have a high-resolution file, you are not going to go very far.” The quality of the scan, he says, determines everything that follows: color management, substrate selection, varnish choices.

What happens at the printer

swissQprint's UV flatbed printers receive the topographic data from a scan and translate it into layers of ink. As Erik Norman at swissQprint describes it, "We're where ink meets the paper.” In practice that means managing color consistency across a print run, and building up the output, layer by layer so that the texture and relief of the original are reproduced in the print.

The substrates available are broader than many artists expect. Rex's preferred material is Aluminum Composite Material (ACM), which is rigid and light, but reproductions can be done on canvas, paper, acrylic, metal, and a range of specialty materials. Jamie McLennan at Innvoke notes they've worked successfully with embellishment papers, and acrylic where the image is printed from behind and texture applied to the front, which produces a different light interaction than the original.

The Longo project

A project with artist Robert Longo illustrates what is possible when an artist collaborates closely with scanning and printing providers.

Longo supplied two collages, each measuring roughly 20 by 28 inches and composed of magazine photographs layered with heavy acrylic paint. Rather than serving as finished works to be reproduced, the collages were intended as source material. He wanted them scanned, enlarged to 55 by 88 inches, reworked in his studio, and then printed on ACM as two-panel pieces for a five-work series. The final product was for exhibition at Pace Gallery and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac during Frieze London, the annual contemporary art fair.

The print process involved approximately 40 layers of white ink, color, and clear varnish per panel. Each piece took seven to eight hours to print. The final instruction from Longo — to apply a high-gloss varnish that the team had been skeptical of — turned out to pull the whole thing together. "It proved that he knows about ten times more about art than we ever will," says Ian Harker of Innvoke.

Rex flew to London for the openings. For him, the significance wasn't just the finished work. It was the confirmation of what the process could reach. "That was our first project," he says. "And it was really an incredible experience."

Who this is for

Norman frames the market in two ways. There’s the heritage use case—museums digitizing collections and artists archiving their own work—but the strongest growth he’s seeing is in the democratization of fine art, expanding access to people who can't afford the original or experience it in person. Part of that is helping artists reach a wider market. “We’ve seen some companies really taking the technology to local artists in the community, to give those artists a path to commercialize their work.”

Accessibility in a more literal sense is also part of the picture. Dodds points out a tactile reproduction of Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring is on exhibition at the Mauritshuis The Hague. The display is printed, oversized in select quadrants, so visitors can feel the brushwork. "It just takes it to a completely different level, especially for those with vision impairment. It allows them to feel the painting," Dodds notes.

For Rex, the case is straightforward. A high-quality scan is a long-term asset. If the original is sold, damaged, or destroyed, the file remains. Prints can be made years later. The work continues to exist in a form that can be licensed, exhibited, and sold. "I look at these digitized files as real assets," he says.

What's changing

Norman notes that UV printing has been around since at least 2007, so the technology itself isn't new. What's changed is adoption and awareness. More print service providers are entering the fine art space because the work is higher-value than standard signage. More artists are also learning that the tools exist. And as they do, they're finding uses that weren't anticipated.

"Artists tend to push the technology," Dodds says. "They're very inquisitive. What can it do, but also what can it not do? I'd like to know what it can't do, because I might push it in that direction."

Harker, who has an art background and also curates shows, says the printing euipment in his shop are creative tools, not just technical ones. "When you come to us, we're not just pressing the button. We're going to smuggle some of our own creativity into the process." For Harker, that means approaching each project with an artist's mindset. "We think about a finished piece the way an artist does, whether that's an exact replication or, when the artist calls for it, a remix—something that takes the work in a new direction."

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