Populating the large wall of the entrance to “Eye on Europe: Prints, Books & Multiples/1960 to Now,” at the Museum of Modern Art, is Peter Kogler’s “Untitled” (1992), a kinetic swarm of giant black ants marching in a labyrinthine circuit-board formation. As much interior design as a work of art, this fun, digitally printed modular wallpaper not only upends the comfortable relationship between insect and human, but lets the viewer know unequivocally that this show is not a survey of traditional modes of printmaking. The focus here is the work of artists intent on radically subverting mediums and distorting genres in order to rethink the entire function of printmaking and editions.

There is a massive, exhausting amount of visual information — more than 350 prints, artist’s books, posters, multiples, wallpapers, and pieces of ephemera. It’s all arranged according to the loose thematic divisions of “mass mediums,” “language,” “confrontations,” “Expressionist impulse,” and “recent projects.” Another section, British Focus, is essentially a mini-exhibition within “Eye on Europe” showcasing the proliferation of interest in printed matter by British artists since the 1990s. Most of the work on view comes from MoMA’s extensive permanent collection — including new acquisitions made during the process of researching and mounting the exhibition — and finds conceptual roots in Duchamp, Dada, early avant-garde publications such as Pan, Broom, and Verve, as well as the tradition of the Parisian livres d’artiste.