Barbara Kruger | Untitled (Kiss)

Barbara Kruger

Untitled (Kiss) 

Helsinki, Finland: Artek, 2019

38 x h. 44 cm.

Edition of 600 stamped and numbered copies

The furniture company Artek was founded in Helsinki in 1935 by Maire Gullichsen, Nils-Gustav Hahl, Aino Aalto, and Alvar Aalto with the goal of selling to "promote a modern culture of living by exhibitions and other educational means.”

Alvar Aalto’s Model 60 stacking stool was designed two years prior, after a series of experiments bending wood culminated in the development of a chair leg that could be mass-manufactured and did not require joinery. Several million copies have been sold, worldwide.

The iconic stackable piece of furniture can be used as a seat, a table, a plant stand or a display surface. In 1958, the stool was added to the permanent collection of MoMA.

Barbara Kruger produced Untitled (Kiss) featuring Alvar Aalto’s Stool 60 in support of the ICA in London, which provided the artist with her first museum solo exhibition, in 1983. But she may have also had a more vindictive motive. 

In May of 2017, Artek collaborated with streetwear brand Supreme to produce a silk-screened checkerboard version of Stool 60 (see below). Kruger has had simmering feud with the company for decades. 

James Jebbia, the founder of Supreme, loaned a book of Kruger’s work to his graphic designer in 1994, who was working on new branding for the company. The resulting logo featured the word Supreme in white letters against a red background, using bold and oblique Futura. It looked exactly like Kruger’s signature style. 

When asked about it at the time, she didn’t want to get involved in a pissing match over appropriation and she told a reporter "I don’t own a font.”

In 2013, another streetwear brand Married To The Mob began producing apparel items featuring the words “Supreme Bitch” in a similar style. Supreme responded with a $10 million dollar lawsuit. 

Asked again, this time the irony was too much for the artist and she replied: “What a ridiculous clusterfuck of totally uncool jokers. I make my work about this kind of sadly foolish farce. I’m waiting for all of them to sue me for copyright infringement.”

Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis | The Courier’s Dilemma

Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis

The Courier’s Dilemma

San Francisco, USA: The Quarterly Report, 2025

12.6" x 9.7 x 4.4"

Edition size unknown

When we visited Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis’ impressive Pittsburgh studio last year there were two mailboxes hanging on the wall beside the stairs leading up to the loft, one for interesting mail, the other for boring (see below). I suspect it began as an organizing principle and grew into an artwork. 

I might’ve pitched the idea of producing them as a Nothing Else Press edition if we hadn’t just produced this work with them the previous year.

The piece has just been announced as the second object project from The Quarterly Report (a spin off of The Thing Quarterly). The edition consists of two metal mail boxes with hand painted text, along with mounting hardware and key. 

The work evokes two favourites: David Shrigley’s NO JUNK MAIL, published by our mutual friends Paul + Wendy Projects, and Ben Vautier’s The Postman’s Choice postcard (a card with address lines on both sides). 

The Courier’s Dilemma is available from the publisher, here, for $275.00 US.

Rosemarie Trockel | Balaklava

Rosemarie Trockel

Balaklava

Cologne, Germany: Esther Schipper, 1986

30 x 20.5 x 4 cm. 

Edition of 10 [+3 AP] signed and numbered copies

When the inventor of the knitting machine, William Lee, returned for another attempt to secure a patent from Queen Elizabeth  the first, she declined a second time, on the basis that the device could take away jobs from her subjects and plunge them into poverty. Her earlier reservation was that the first pair of machine-made socks presented to her were "too coarse for royal ankles". 

When Europeans introduced the invention to America in the 17th century, the machine was thought to be dangerous, for potentially leaving women with too much idle time on their hands. 

The machine-knit balaclava has become somewhat of a signature work for Rosemarie Trockel, evoking ‘women’s work’, danger and protection.  

Her interest stems from the Baader-Meinhof Gang, or Red Army Faction as they would later be called. Born from the radical student movement of the late sixties, the group was comprised of mainly middle-class youth, who aimed to liberate the country from capitalism. Their tactics included department store bombings, bank robberies, political assinations, the hijacking of a commercial airplane, and the seizue of the German Embassy in Sweden. They were often seen wearing balaclavas, frequently fashioned from headscarves. 

The name “balaclava” comes from the town of Balaklava in Crimea, where British troops wore them to protect themselves from the cold while serving in the Crimean War, which too place between October 1853 and March of 1856.

Trockel mines the rich dual associations of the form: the representation of warmth and protection, as well as intimidation and anonymity. The simple knitted article of clothing is worn to hike and ski, or so that one might march in a protest rally, rob a bank or commit an act of terrorism. 

Protestors are increasingly relying on masks to protect themselves from the use of facial recognition software, which governments are employing to crack down on both illegal and legal public protests. The tactic may be short lived. A Vice magazine article suggests that in the not-too-distant future Artificial Intelligence will be used to identify even masked protestors, by the gait of their walk. Reportedly, one’s walk is as unique as a fingerprint, and harder to hide than their face. The Vice piece was published seven years ago, in 2017. 

Trockel’s Balaclavas are typically patterned, perhaps conflating Op Art with craft. The distinctive black-and-grey repetitive ‘wave’ design (see above, top) is derived from a pattern book, and recalls the work of British painter Bridget Riley. It was created with the aid of computer software, and manufactured on a knitting machine. 

The Esther Schipper edition is surprisingly valuable for a work intended to be worn, or stored in a small cardboard box. I’ve seen it reach auction heights of above forty thousand dollars.  In this respect, it sits among a small group of editions that function as signature works for the artists: Joseph Beuys’ Felt Suit and Sled, Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain (not intended as an edition, but reproduced several times) and Piero Manzoni’s Artists’ Shit. 

Wall Show Mailer

[Various Artists]

Wall Show

Los Angeles, USA: Pace Gallery, 1969

9 x 12.5 x 1 cm.

Edition size unknown

Thirty-two years ago today, Roberta Smith published an article in the New York Times titled “Art Invitations As Small Scraps Of History”, writing “Invitations are style statements in a minor key, ancillary artworks of a collective sort. Designed by artists, by graphic designers, by art dealers and museum curators—usually a combination of the above—they are the advance guard for the real thing. Their merit is judged in the very act of reading one’s mail.”

She cites this rare and unusual example of a notable piece of art ephemera produced for a group show. 

The 1969 exhibition at Pace Gallery was titled Wall Show and featured works by Lawrence Weiner, Douglas Huebler, Bob Huot, Robert Ryman, Mel Bochner, Sol Lewitt and Bill Bollinger. Each artist was invited to produce a wall work, which would be on view for a single week. 

The exhibition invitation consisted of rubber stamped sheetrock, or ‘wall’. 

Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair Opens Tonight

 

Wim Delvoye | Early Works

Wim Delvoye

Early Works (1968-1971)

Belgium: Rectapublishers, 2002

264 pp., 30 x 23 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

An artist book masquerading as a monograph, this title plays with the Early Works trope of unearthing examples from the beginnings of an artist’s career (often elderly, or deceased). Given that Delvoye was born in 1965, these works would have been produced between the ages of three and six - just before and just after beginning primary school. 

Purportedly preserved by his prescient mother, the drawings show how a young child is "directed, limited, and influenced by contemporary iconography”. Conversely, it has been suggested that Delvoye collected drawings made by children and signed his name to them retroactively. 

Either way, the book is a playful satire of the merchandizing of an artist’s life. 

David Byrne

Happy Birthday to David Byrne, who turns 73 today.