Michael Dumontier, Micah Lexier | Call Ampersand Response

Michael Dumontier, Micah Lexier
Call Ampersand Response
Zurich, Switzerland: Lars Müller, 2019
392 pp., 17 × 24 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

Originally published by Nieves in 2012, this second, expanded edition includes the entire collaborative project of 196 images exchanged over email between 2011 and 2017. The book is available from the publishers for 40,00 €, here.

Dumontier and Lexier will be speaking about the project at Edition Toronto later this afternoon, and the title will be available at the Type Books table.

Jon Sasaki at North American Souvenirs

My favourite booth at the Edition Toronto Art Book Fair this weekend was North American Souvenirs, from Miami/Detroit. Despite producing multiples, North American Souvenirs offered nothing for sale at their booth, but instead provided a phone-charging service for fair vendors and visitors. The device, by Jon Sasaki, above, is made from a car battery, padlocks, binder clips, necklaces, pairs of scissors and other random household items. A video projector presented other examples from his Improvised Travel Adaptors series.

The booth also offered free postcards, fortune cookies and a variety of halloween candy over the weekend.

Operated by Pete Rozek and Hernan Bas, North American Souvenirs host artist residencies and stage "visual arts productions in some of our favorite communities to connect you to neighborhood places and cultural heritage. We offer limited edition souvenirs as keepsakes of our experiences, but hope the places we have toured together will create memories you won’t soon forget." Their programming is based on "long-range government plans, philanthropic institutions’ policy initiatives, and community development objectives."

Visit their website for more information here. And see more of the Improvised Travel Adaptors at Sasaki's site, here.


"We do the boring work so you don’t have to, and try to limit your experiences to what we hope you’ll enjoy as fun, recreational opportunities."

- North American Souvenirs

Derek Sullivan | A piece of glass

Derek Sullivan
A piece of glass 
Toronto, Canada: Paul+Wendy Projects, 2018
50" [approx.]
Edition of 100

A glass prism, metal rings, coloured cord, foil stamped die-cut cards. The first 15 copies are signed and numbered and feature metallic gold foil stamp with gold cord, and sell for $250. The remaining 85 are grey foil stamp with blue cord and are available for $75.

"A publication to hang in a window, a bit of wonder when conditions permit."

- Derek Sullivan

Mammalian Diving Reflex | Haircuts by Children

Mammalian Diving Reflex
Haircuts by Children
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2018
41 x 27.2 cm.
Edition of 25 signed and numbered copies [+ 5 AP]

The Nothing Else Press is pleased to launch a new photo edition of John Lauener's iconic image of Mammalian Diving Reflex's Haircuts by Children. 

In the event - which the Calgary Herald called “Part performance art, part public service, part therapy” - kids are given the tools to become working hairdressers and the public is invited have their hair cut, by nine and ten year olds. A simple premise, with deep implications. The project tests our trust in the next generation and measures how far we’re willing to go to empower youth.

This print features an image of Coach House Press founder Stan Bevington as he sits for a haircut by a pair of adorable kids. It is available in an edition of 25, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the internationally acclaimed Mammalian Diving Reflex, a research-art atelier dedicated to investigating the social sphere and dismantling barriers between individuals of all ages, cultural, economic and social backgrounds

The work sells for $75.00 and is available this week at the Edition Toronto Art Book Fair, or here.

Josef Albers Wood Puzzle Set

[Josef Albers]
Josef Albers Wood Puzzle Set
New York City, USA: MoMA/Galison, 2018
27.4 x 15.2 x 3.5 cm.
Edition size unknown

A set of six 5 x 3" puzzles, each with 25 pieces, featuring images by Joseph Albers, housed in a wooden box with a silkscreened lid. The paintings reproduced include are all from the Museum of Modern Art's permanent collection: Full from Homage to the Square: Ten Works by Josef Albers, 1962; Midnight + Noon V from Midnight and Noon, 1964; Patina from Homage to the Square: Ten Works by Josef Albers, 1962; Wide Light from Homage to the Square: Ten Works by Josef Albers, 1962; Day + Night VIII  from Homage to the Square: Ten Works by Josef Albers, 1962; and Tenuous from Homage to the Square: Ten Works by Josef Albers, 1962.

Available from the Type Books booth at the Edition Art Fair this weekend.

Marcel Dzama | All my very bats....

Marcel Dzama
All my very bats.... 
Toronto, Canada: Paul+Wendy Projects, 2018
3 x 2.5 x 3"
Edition of 30 signed and numbered copies [+ 3 AP]

The 47th edition by Paul + Wendy Projects (and their third with Dzama and second with bats) is a rubber stamp accompanied by a stamped card, numbered and signed by the artist.

The work is available for $200 CDN at Table 38 of the Edition Art Fair, or from their website, here.

Jon Sasaki | Something Difficult Done Easily

Jon Sasaki
Something Difficult Done Easily
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2018
8.5 x 29 x 8.5 cm.
Edition of 50 signed and numbered copies

The Nothing Else Press is pleased to announce the launch of a new edition by Toronto artist Jon Sasaki.

Typically, building a model ship in a bottle requires hundreds of hours of patient finicky work, inserting tiny parts individually through the neck of a bottle and cementing them into place.
In this multiple, a model ship has been made from superabsorbent polymer, the same material used for novelty "grow in water" dinosaurs. After pushing it into the bottle and filling it with water, the ship will expand approximately 500% in volume.

The work is available for $75 at the Edition Art Book Fair from Thursday to Sunday. Booth number and other fair information to follow. Or reserve a copy by emailing nothingelsepress@rogers.com. 

Jon Sasaki | In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock on the morning

Jon Sasaki
In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o’clock on the morning
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2014
9 x 7 x 3 cm
Edition of 50 signed and numbered copies.

Two potatoes wired to power a science toy clock broadcast a distressing message.

Packaged in a clear plastic box, the work includes the altered clock (a wired LCD screen, copper and zinc electrodes), extra nails and an instruction sheet. Potatoes are not included.

“[The buyer] becomes complicit: they have to stab these two potatoes with electrodes and watch the system run itself down. It’s tragedy, but really only tragicomedy. If it were a sentient being it would be tragedy. It’s comedy because it’s just a potato. There’s something heartbreaking and funny about empathizing with an inanimate object.”

- Jon Sasaki, Canadian Art Magazine, Summer 2014

Available at the Edition Art Fair from Thursday to Sunday, where a new edition by Sasaki will also be launched (see following post).

Dean Baldwin | Eel’s Wallet

Dean Baldwin
Eel’s Wallet
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2014
16 x 11 x 3.5 cm (closed) 16 x 21.5 x 2 cm (open)
Edition of 47 signed and numbered copies

A continuation of the artist's many alcohol-themed projects (including bars for Nuit Blanche, the Venice Bienalle, etc., etc.) this eel-skin wallet contains virtually every possible event drink ticket currently in use. Buy one, and wherever you are the drinks are always on the house.


"Named after Dick Higgins' Fluxus-heavy press of the ’60s and ’70s, Something Else Press, this young publisher seemed the only ones present to have produced an entire new line of works especially for the Fair. My favourite? “Eel’s Wallet” by Dean Baldwin, an edition of 47 wallets stuffed full of drinks tickets, which bizarrely becomes some sort of “book” for which we have no name."

- AA Bronson, Time Out Magazine "Five Picks from the London Art Book Fair"

Available from the Nothing Else Press at Edition Toronto this weekend. 

Kim Dorland | Same Old Future

Kim Dorland
Same Old Future
Toronto, Canada: Edition Editions, 2017
68 pp., 6.75 × 9", softcover
Edition of 500

Available from the publishers, here, for $40 CDN.

Edition Art Book Fair

The third iteration of the Edition Art Book Fair opens a week today, at the Toronto Convention centre. Organized by Gareth Brown-Jowett, MaryAnn Camilleri and Devan Patel, the fair operates in tandem with Art Toronto, and is dedicated to the promotion of art book publishing in all forms and artworks created in editions.

The Edition Art Book Fair will run from Friday, October 26 to Sunday, October 28, 2018. A full list of exhibitors is below.


Alison Postma (Toronto)
Akin Projects (Toronto)
Anteism (Montreal)
AOK EDITIONS (Brooklyn)
Archive of Modern Conflict (Toronto)
Art Canada Institute (Toronto)
Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto)
Art Gallery of York University (Toronto)
Art Moi (Winnipeg)
Arts + Letters Press (Toronto)
Blank Cheque Press (Toronto)
C Magazine (Toronto)
Christopher Kardambikis (Alexandria, Virginia)
Critical Distance Centre for Curators (Toronto)
Cross Process (Toronto)
Division Gallery (Montreal / Toronto)
Double Happiness Project (Toronto)
Edna Press (London)
ESPACE art actuel (Montreal)
Esse (Montreal)
Forest City Gallery (London)
Gallery 44 (Toronto)
Gallery TPW (Toronto)
Gendai Gallery (Toronto)
guy guy guy (Toronto)
Hannah Burr (Ann Arbor)
Hektor Projects (Toronto)
HOMOCATS (Brooklyn)
Jade Zhang (Toronto)
Jessica Thalmann + Ryan Van Der Hout (Toronto)
Lunchroom (Toronto)
Mad Mohre (Adrian)
Magenta Foundation (Toronto)
McIntosh Gallery (London)
Ness Lee (Toronto)
N. American Souvenirs (Miami)
Nothing Else Press (Toronto)
NUT (Brooklyn)
OHKE Time (Toronto)
Overlapse (London, UK)
Paul + Wendy Projects (Toronto)
Peripheral Review (Guelph)
Platform (Winnipeg)
Prefix Photo (Toronto)
Raw Meat Collective (New York)
Ryerson (Toronto)
Shortt Editions (Muncie)
Stephen Bulger Gallery (Toronto)
Successful Press (Toronto)
The Experimental Typographic Project (Montreal)
The Roundtable Residency (Toronto)
Troy Gronsdahl (Saskatoon)
Type Books (Toronto)
UPON Prints (New York)
Vide Press (Toronto)
Weekender Supply (Toronto)
Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP (Vancouver)
Agnes Wong (Toronto)


Location:

Metro Toronto Convention Centre
North Building, Street Level
255 Front St W
Toronto ON M5V 2W6

Dates & Times:

October 25, 2018 6–10pm
October 26, 2018 12–8pm
October 27, 2018 12–8pm
October 28, 2018 12–6pm

Ronin Furdyk | Twenty-Four Composers

Ronin Furdyk
Twenty-Four Composers
Toronto, Canada: Perish Publishing, 2016
[26] pp., 14 x 14 cm., staple-bound
Edition size unknown

The sweetest purchase I made at the Edition Toronto fair last month, with easily the best artist biography: "Ronin is nine years old and lives in Calgary."

Furdyk has had a fascination with the symphony since the age of three, recreating the orchestra with his stuffed animals after attending a concert. This square booklet (Mr Men sized?) contains only a  small sampling from his hundreds of related drawings. The book features portraits of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert, Satie and nineteen others, as well as a drawing of the performing orchestra.

Now a teenager, Ronin is reportedly a Foo Fighters fan.

Available for $10 as a poster or a book, (or $15 for both), from the publisher, here.

Nothing Else Press at Edition Toronto

Still recovering from the fair, which was great but tiring. Editions above by Mathew Sawyer, Lee Henderson, Jonathan Monk, David Shrigley, Karen Azoulay, VSVSVS, Jon Sasaki, Paul Butler, Alex Snukal, Colleen Savage, Robert Fones, Jimmy Limit, Joy Walker, Garry Neill Kennedy, Dean Baldwin, Vanessa Maltese, Micah Lexier, Claudia Rick, Daniel Eatock and Aleksansdra Mir.

Thanks to our neighbours OOF Books from Los Angeles, Type Books from Toronto, Paul + Wendy Projects and Guy Guy Guy, for Halloween candy and companionship.

V.Vale on RE/Search publications

From noon to 1:30 today at Edition Toronto, V.Vale from RE/Search publications will be speaking in conversation with Lauren Wetmore.

"RE/Search Publications was founded by V. Vale in 1977 out of San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore with a $200 loan from Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Over the subsequent four decades RE/Search became the essential source for pre-internet, punk, and counter-culture independent publishing. Based out of San Francisco, DIY strategies informed the voice and design of the publications, which take the form of tabloids, handbooks, textbooks, and zines, and feature interviews, ephemera, commissioned artwork, and literature. RE/Search was a vital early platform for many artists, writers, and performers who have gone on to exemplify experimental and punk practices including The Yes Men, Annie Sprinkle, Lydia Lunch, and George Kuchar. It was also an essential republication source for banned or out-of-print material by J.G. Ballard, William Burroughs, Brion Gysin, and Octave Mirbeau. RE/Search publication’s catalogue provides on-the-ground portraits of underground cultural movements such as Noise music (The Industrial Culture Handbook, 1983), body art and ethnographic practices (Modern Primitives, 1989), feminist performance art (Angry Women, 1991), and independent publishing, (Zines Vol.1 and 2, 1996).Curator and writer Lauren Wetmore presents Incredibly Strange Resistance: 40 years of RE/Search Publications, a history of RE/Search Publications featuring ephemera and footage from V. Vale’s archive. The lecture, followed by a Q&A with Momus publisher Sky Goodden, illuminates RE/Search Publication’s uncompromising practice of political and cultural resistance through DIY publishing – a unique position in North American art-house publishing and a vital perspective for the contemporary context."

Lee Henderson | To Conjure From Vapour

Lee Henderson
To Conjure From Vapour
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2017
80pp., 13 x 8 x 3.5 cm., boxed
Edition of 125 numbered copies.

The Nothing Else Press is very pleased to announce the publication of a new work by Toronto-based artist Lee Henderson. Henderson was artist-in-residence this summer at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, Scotland, where he produced several works which examined the notion of "spirit" ranging from supernatural apparitions, to the ideal of camaraderie, to the sort we imbibe.

To Conjure From Vapour is a tarot deck of metaphysical whisky tasting notes:

"The "tasting note" is an increasingly common technique in the promotion of scotch whisky. Most immediately, it can be described as any (expert?) account of the flavours one can expect when tasting a whisky. But at its core is a paradox, or at the very least a riddle—it's a piece of scripted text that attempts to transform a direct, subjective, evanescent experience into a shared language. This should put it firmly into the demesne of poetry.

To Conjure From Vapour therefore considers the tasting note as a communion with the spirit world (spirit as alcohol, but also as breath, or soul, or ideal). It includes a card with a custom text for each of the 22 Major Arcana and the 56 Minor Arcana, with the implements of spiritcraft replacing the traditional suits (barrel staves for wands, clocks for coins, glasses for cups, and hammers for swords). The deck facilitates the divination of one's taste before even touching the spirit; a potomancer's companion." 

- Lee Henderson

Henderson's practice includes video, photography, installation, sculpture, performance, and text. His work moves in constant contemplation of death, in senses grand and minute, somewhere between the persistence of collective histories and the brevity of individual lives. 

A solo exhibition of the work he produced as part of the Glenfiddich, And the Voices Came From Nowhere, can currently be seen at Zalucky Gallery until November 11th. His work can also be seen at Open Studio as part of a two-person visiting artist residency exhibition, until November 18th. 

Mathew Sawyer | Venn Diagram for the World

Mathew Sawyer
Venn Diagram for the World
Toronto, Canada: Nothing Else Press, 2017
13 x 9.5 cm.
Open edition


Nothing Else Press is pleased to announce the launch of a a new fridge magnet featuring Sawyer's 2010 work Venn Diagram for the World.

When he was still a student, Matthew Higgs compared Sawyer to both Martin Creed and Bas Jan Ader, in the pages of Art Forum. Skye Sherwin in the Guardian more recently wrote "[in Sawyer's Venn Diagram] there's the world we want and the world we live in, but there is no real world. By this, Sawyer is implying, of course, that we're solipsistic folk, stuck in the world in our head. He tests the boundaries, exploring what is arguably the crux of all art: the yearning to communicate and make sense of life, and the challenges of doing so."

Sawyer's work encompasses painting, drawing, sculpture, performance, discreet interventions, and music (writing, recording and performing under the name The Ghosts, and briefly as the drummer for the Television Personalities). Sawyer is based in London, England. Visit his website here for more information.

The work is available for purchase for $8.00 here, or at the Edition Toronto Art Book fair for $5.00 this weekend.

Jack Pierson | Tomorrow’s Man 4

Jack Pierson
Tomorrow’s Man 4
Port Colborne, Canada: Bywater Bros. Editions, 2017
104 pp., 25.4 x 18.4 cm., softcover
Edition size unknown

Edited and designed by Jack Pierson and Roger Bywater

"The fourth volume in Jack Pierson’s celebrated Tomorrow’s Man artist book series mixes imagery from all spectrums of the visual landscape into a single mediation on the world around us. Combining archival material together with contributions by emerging and established artists, Tomorrow’s Man 4 continues on where the earlier volumes left off. Mixed together in its signature all over design format this installment showcases historical pen and ink sketches by John Tottenham, hummingbird portraits by Brian Calvin, glazed ceramic constructions by Liz Larner, and deadpan street shots by Trevor Hernandez (better known to many by his Instagram handle Gang Culture) together with contributions by Cali Dewitt, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Lily Stockman, Richard Tinkler, and Evan Whale.

The title, Tomorrow’s Man, comes from an infamous bodybuilding magazine from the 1950s and ‘60s. Reappropriating the publication’s title as well as its retro bodybuilding aesthetic, Pierson takes viewers on a dizzying visual journey encompassing the full spectrum of cultural references. Includes a four large fold-out posters."

Launching at the Edition Toronto Art Fair this weekend.

Divya Mehra | Beach Towel



Divya Mehra
As a “Dilemma" We’re Seen as Enormous (Tokens are Currency): Beach Towel
Toronto, Canada: Art Metropole, 2017
60 × 35”
Edition of 36 signed copies

"Working in a variety of mediums, Divya Mehra addresses the effects of colonization and institutional racism, re-contextualizing references found in hip hop, literature and current affairs. Mehra’s practice explores diasporic identities, racialization, otherness and the construct of “diversity.” Her work has been featured many exhibitions and screenings, notably with Creative Time, MoMA PS1, MTV, and the Queens Museum (New York), MASS MoCA (North Adams), Artspeak (Vancouver), the Images Festival (Toronto), the Beijing 798 Biennale, Bielefelder Kunstverein, and Latitude 28 (Delhi). Mehra holds an MFA from Columbia University and is represented in Toronto by Georgia Scherman Projects. She divides her time between Winnipeg, Delhi and New York."

- Art Metropole

Available at the Art Metropole booth at Edition Toronto this weekend, for $115.00 CDN. 

Jon Sasaki | Skeleton Key to Many Cities

Jon Sasaki
Skeleton Key to Many Cities
Toronto, Canada: Casey House, 2010
1.5 x 5.5″
Edition of 125

A "Key to the City" is an honor bestowed by a mayor or city council to esteemed residents and visitors. The practice evokes the time of medieval walled cities, whose gates would be guarded during the day and locked at night. The key therefore symbolizes that the recipient is a "trusted friend of the city" and is therefore free to enter and leave the city at will.

Sasaki presents the buyer with a 'skeleton' or 'master' key, capable of opening multiple locks. The work is made of cast pewter and housed inside a black velvet case.

It is available from the publisher (in aid of their compassionate HIV/AIDS programs, which include inpatient care, day health program, community care and outreach, and social community programming) for $125, or at the Edition Art Book Fair this week, for the discounted price of $65.00.

C Magazine

C Magazine is a Toronto-based contemporary art and criticism periodical dedicated to "providing a forum for significant ideas in visual art and culture." Published quarterly, the issues each explore a different theme through commissioned texts and artists' projects. Recent themes include Voice, Land, Refusal and Force.

C The Visual Arts Foundation additionally produces artists' editions for their annual fundraising auction. Past artists have included Ken Lum, Roula Partheniou, Cedric Bomford (w/ Jim and Nathan Bomford), Jennifer Rose Sciarrino, Abbas Akhavan and many others. I believe some of these will be available at their booth at the upcoming Edition Toronto Fair.