Kippenberger Enquiry

 

If you’re able to help Micah Lexier out with his quest to catalogue every Martin Kippenberger Broken Centimeter, please reach out to him via Instagram. 

Bernd and Hilla Becher | Industriebauten

 

Bernd and Hilla Becher

Industriebauten

Mönchengladbach, Germany: Städtischen Museum, 1968

19.3 x 15.5cm.

Edition of 55

The third in the series of Stadtisches boxed catalogue/multiple hybrids is the rarest of them all, and the most expensive. The work has an estimated value of over twenty thousand dollars. It originally sold for 15 DM. 

Housed in a facsimile of a Agfa-Gaevert photo-paper box, the works consists of ten gelatine silver prints of the Becher’s "anonymous sculpture” (silos, gas tanks, towers, etc). 

Rather than the high edition sizes of the other boxes (which tend to range from 220 to 660 copies), this was produced in an edition of 55. Each photograph is stamped on the verso (see below) with the couple’s copyright. 

“[Johannes] Cladders’s early 1968 institutional presentation of the Bechers’ celebrated photographs of industrial architecture helped establish them as “conceptual photographers.” The box associated with this exhibition contained ten original silver gelatin prints along with a curatorial text. Although the show, with its meticulous documentary dryness, was presumably not to everyone’s taste, how amazing it must have been for some to be able to view the photography on display and then bring home this beautiful print object including actual photographs.”

- Lucy Ives

Ottmar Hörl | Große Wandzeichnung

Ottmar Hörl

Große Wandzeichnung

Berlin, Germany: Artikel Editionen, 2000

Audio CD, 30:00

Edition of 100 signed and numbered copies

"The scupltor Ottmar Hörl drew with a pencil for 30 minutes on a wall. What the drawing looks like, you can only hear – on this CD.”

Steve Reich | Writings About Music

Steve Reich

Writings About Music

Halifax, Canada: NSCAD Press, 1974

80 pp., 19 × 24 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

"Writings About Music is the first book by one of the most important and innovative composers working today. Steve Reich investigates the relation of Western composers to non-Western music, especially Balinese and African, and gives a musical analysis of some African music made during the composer’s visit to Ghana in 1970. He discusses the relation of music to dance both in our culture and in others and the development of his own music from the early tape pieces of the 1960’s to the instrumental pieces of the 1970's, stressing his movement away from electronics and towards live music. Writings About Music is fully illustrated with musical examples and photographs. It includes a list of works, important performances and recordings."

- publisher’s statement

Jiří Valoch | Optical Book

Jiří Valoch

Optical Book

Brescia, Italy: Edizioni Amodulo, 1970

[24] pp., 20 x 20 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 1000 unsigned copies

A rare artist book consisting of a single thin vertical red line in varying positions. 

Henri Chopin

Henri Chopin died on this day in 2008, at the age of 85.

Mike Kelley | Little Friend

Mike Kelley

Little Friend

Melbourne, Australia/Tokyo, Japan: Perks and Mini/Medicom Toy, 2007

41 x 25 x 18 cm.

Edition of 800

Valued at around $800 US, this blue fur and felt plush toy speaks twenty random phrases when squeezed. These include "Hurt me, I don't mind!”, "Do you really love me?”, "You’re my little sissy now” and “Get it away from me, get it away”. Batteries not included. 

"He's back! Do you miss the special love that a Little Friend can give? I bet you do! If you're like most of us, there's a Little Friend from your past whose voice haunts you across space and time. Little Friend is the specter of your childhood, when you stood at puberty's door.

"No, no," whined Little Friend, "don't abandon me!" ...But you did.

Maybe it took a little longer than everyone wanted it to. Perhaps you were guilt-tripped and teased. Now Little Friend has returned. Say hello to Little Friend, the voice of your past.

Little Friend: For the sissy in all of us.”

- publisher statement