Tavares Strachan | Seen/Unseen

Tavares Strachan

Seen/Unseen

Hong Kong, China: ArtAsiaPacific, 2014

182 pp., 21.5 × 29.5 cm., hardcover

Edition size unknown

An artist book/exhibition catalogue hybrid that documents Strachan’s 2011 secret survey exhibition of the same name. Installed in an undisclosed location in New York City, and deliberately made inaccessible to the public, the exhibition explored "the polarizing dichotomies of presence and absence, visibility and invisibility, and man and nature".

Edited by Hanae Ko and Elaine W. Ng and designed by Sagmeister&Walsh Seen/Unseen features new texts by Gregory Volk and Robert Hobbs and interviews between the artist and Franklin Sirmans and schoolchildren of the Cary Academy.  

Yesterday it was announced Strachan was a recipient of the MacArthur fellowship - receiving an $800,000 stipend, with no strings attached.

"In late 2009, I started thinking about the idea of an "invisible" show. Almost two years later, Seen/Unseen, a 20,000-square-foot exhibition of my work from the preceding six years, opened in an undisclosed industrial space in New York City. Despite the fact that Seen/Unseen was closed to the public, a press release was issued via e-flux, a full-page ad was placed in Artforum and announcements about the show were mailed. The exhibition closed on October 28, 2011, four-and-a-half weeks after it opened. This book documents and presents insight into Seen/Unseen."

- Tavares Strachan