Vera Frenkel - Big X Window

Big X Window at Koffler Arts | Vera Frenkel

Vera Frenkel's Big X Window, a four-part stone lithograph suite from our archive, is on loan to Koffler Arts for As If by Chance... (May 21 to June 14, 2026), an exhibition featuring her two-channel video and photo installation about the loss of a beloved Toronto arts centre and the community it fostered. Generously donated by the artist, the suite is available for purchase, with proceeds supporting both organizations.

READ MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Artist: Vera Frenkel
Title: Big X Window
Year: 1975-76
Medium: stone lithograph, suite of four prints. 
Edition: O.S II
Paper size: 41.75" x 28.75" (each quadrant)
Overall artwork size: 87.5" x 61.5"

Vera Frenkel’s Big X Window suite was commissioned by Art Bank and co-published by Open Studio, the artist, and Art Bank. This edition is signed as an 'Open Studio Proof' originally assigned to the Open Studio print archive. The numbered edition size of this print suite was an edition of 70. 

Big X Window marks the culmination of work from a body of X-prints and drawings originating from Frenkel’s video performance project String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City Video (1974), and the many ‘X’s’ created during long-distance enactments of a classic cat’s cradle game. In a 1975 scripted exchange between two unidentified voices, Frenkel explores the contradictory readings of an ‘X’ – “meaning both “yes, this, right here and no, not this, not here” - while also noting “X is the window or moment between alternatives; it could mean either. A window distinguishes between self and other. You see through the glass/you are barred from what you see. The glass shows and cancels at the same time.”

Frenkel’s Big X Window edition was printed across a period of almost two years, by Don Holman, Don Phillips, Otis Tamasauskas, Elma Schumacher, and Steve MacKenzie. 

Signature Note: Each print signed "Frenkel" in bottom right. 
Provenance: Open Studio print archive.