Richard Artschwager | Four Approximate Objects

Richard Artschwager 

Four Approximate Objects

New York City/Santa Monica, USA: Brooke Alexander, Inc., and Daniel Weinberg Gallery, 1991

9 x 37 x 34 cm.

Edition of 30 signed and numbered copies

A boxed work in which the box is as interesting as the contents. The four approximate objects are made of chrome-plated brass, which are housed in a flocked mahogany whose lid seems to expand to contain them. 

Ryan McGinley | Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

Ryan McGinley

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

New York City, USA: Dashwood Books, 2010

180 pp., 22 x 28 cm., softcover

Edition of 2000

Taking it’s title from a 1969 Neil Young LP, this catalogue for an exhibition of the same name features all one hundred images from the show, as well as a conversation between between Ryan McGinley and Catherine Opie.

"While putting together the catalog that accompanies his current show at Team Gallery, Ryan McGinley asked another photographer, Catherine Opie, if she would interview him. In some ways it was a strange choice. Ms. Opie, 49, is best known for studio portraits that are as static and deliberate as the 32-year-old Mr. McGinley’s photographs are hyperkinetic. And while both artists explore queer identity, they’re separated by gender, geography and nearly a generation.

Their conversation, as recorded in the catalog, is probing and insightful. [...] At the heart of this exchange are ideas about studio portraiture, and about the photographers who defined this art form in the 20th century: Penn, Avedon and especially Mapplethorpe. Also evident is a renewed interest in community and family.

Both artists also happen to be going through transitional phases. Ms. Opie, working in Los Angeles, had a midcareer survey at the Guggenheim in 2008, and Mr. McGinley, in New York and settling into his 30s, is trying to move beyond the kids-behaving-badly imagery of his 2003 New York solo debut at the Whitney, a first impression that still defines him, at least commercially.

[...]

Studio photography, for Mr. McGinley, seems to be synonymous with control. Physically, the lithe young models who appear in the pictures at Team Gallery don’t look all that different from other McGinley subjects. Yet in black and white, and with the isolation of the studio, they’re suddenly awkward and even indecent.

[You] have to admire Mr. McGinley for making such a decisive break with the work that has earned him critical accolades, a hipster following and a substantial commercial portfolio. His choice of Ms. Opie for the catalog is part of the shift. In a way he’s disowning earlier role models: “I feel like if I get compared to Nan Goldin and Larry Clark again, I’m going to buy a gun and start shooting people,” he jokes in the catalog interview.

As interviewer, Ms. Opie poses some good questions. Why take the exhibitionism indoors, for instance? “In a place like a studio, where the person is already stripped from all context,” she asks, “what is your interest in the body and in representing it?”

She’s also probably one of the only people whose first reaction to Mr. McGinley’s photography is to historicize it. His shots of teenagers exploring the wilderness are “steeped in a nostalgia for freedom that dates back to the 19th century,” Ms. Opie says. “Like, I look at your work sometimes and I think about F. Holland Day.” Her observations are borne out in several large color photographs at Team, set on cliffs and in caves, that serve as a foil to the black and whites.

Ms. Opie also draws out Mr. McGinley’s interest in family, which she shares. Mr. McGinley is the youngest of eight children, and his siblings are all more than a decade older than he. Everyone in his pictures, he says, “resembles the way that my brothers and sisters looked when I was a child.”

In a way, his relationship to Ms. Opie has the same dynamic. She’s the cautious older sister, and he’s the adventurous little brother. But as their shows imply, those roles can sometimes be reversed.”

- Karen Rosenberg, New York Times

Shirin Neshat | Neshat-isms

Shirin Neshat/Larry Walsh

Neshat-isms

Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press, 2024

152 pp., 4.25 x 5.25”, hardcover

Edition size unknown

Released in February of this year, this title is from a series curated and edited by Larry Walsh that includes Ai WeiWei, Keith Haring, Judy Chicago, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol, Damian Hirst and others. 

Following a very brief, six-paragraph introduction by Walsh, the book is divided into six chapters: Art, Film, Process, Identity & Self, Belonging, and Resistance. It features quotes from the artist, gathered from interviews (with Arthur Danto, Robert Enright & Meeka Walsh, Glenn Lowry, etc.), writings and public talks. 

When I was teaching at the University of Guelph, Shirin Neshat gave a lecture at the school, in 2017. It was March 8th and Donald Trump had been president for less than two months, but had already issued his second travel ban for Muslim countries, two days prior. 

Surrounded by portraits of men that adorn the walls of the War Memorial Hall - and on the hundredth iteration of International Woman’s Day - audience member Merray Gerges asked Neshat to clarify a previous statement about not identifying as a feminist. 

“I have a problem with descriptions like that,” she replied. “If a man makes work about men, he’s a masculinist? I feel there is a certain amount of responsibility when you say, ‘I’m a feminist.’ What does that mean? I’m not competing with men. I’m not interested in being a man. I’m just interested in expressing and exploring women’s issues. Does that make me a feminist?”

“Yes!” yelled the crowd. 

“Okay, fine. I am,” she quickly conceded. “It took me years to figure out whether I am a feminist or not so thank you, you helped me a lot.”

It was a pretty compelling moment: both her initial reluctance to be reduced to an epithet (her history of advocacy for human rights is well documented and didn’t require buttressing) but also her willingness to accept the term as defined by the crowd. 

This kind of back-and-forth or larger context is what’s missing from this collection. Many of the statements are fairly innocuous and would be interchangeable with just about any artist: 

“I see my art as a tool for dialogue” 

“I never censor myself, but I do give myself a lot of boundaries”

“Art is about artists asking questions, but not providing answers” 

Neshat-isms is at its most engaging when the quotes begin to form a portrait of the artist, as a kind of cobbled together biography. For example:

“Through my work I have continued to defy and resist the Western clichéd image of Iranian women as passive victims. While acknowledging the repressive situation in Iran, I have continued to represent Iranian women as empowered, courageous, defiant, and rebellious.”

and 

“Every Iranian artist, in one form or another, is political. Politics has defined our lives.”

“I’ve done a lot of work about women in a state of madness, where ultimately they find a kind of freedom.”

While I’m always happy to read primary source material, this ultimately feels like handsomely produced bathroom book. 

Printed Matter to close its St Marks location

PRINTED MATTER PRESS RELEASE: 

"An innovative, six-year collaboration with Swiss Institute comes to an end in mid-October

August 28 - October 14, 2024

We are saddened to announce the closing of Printed Matter / St Marks, our East Village bookstore that has operated at the corner of St Marks Place and 2nd Avenue over the last six years. The last day the storefront will be open to the public is October 13, 2024.  

The bookstore came into existence as the result of a rare and wonderful collaboration with Swiss Institute, and we thank them for their incredible hospitality and partnership that made the storefront possible. 

Printed Matter / St Marks has been a remarkable site for experimentation, nurtured by the vibrant community of independent arts institutions and fellow bookstores in the East Village. 

We are grateful to the many Printed Matter staff members who have contributed so much energy and talent to all that the space undertook, and who made the location a special place for discovering artists’ books and zines. We are additionally indebted to the generosity of Swiss Institute and its employees for their collaboration and support. 

Printed Matter / St Marks opened in July 2018, under the guidance of former Printed Matter Director Max Schumann and former Swiss Institute Director, Simon Castets, and has been carried forward with the support of current Swiss Institute Director Stefanie Hessler. The bookstore maintains a specialty focus on the East Village neighborhood and its history as a home for avant garde art and countercultural publications in Lower Manhattan, offering a curated selection of independently published books by artists, zines, rare, and historical material, as well as artist-made multiples, prints, and posters.

From this location, Printed Matter / St Marks has presented a robust calendar of programs, events, and workshops, including four editions of the East Village Zine Fair, a joyous and wildly successful outdoor zine fair organized in collaboration with 8-Ball Community. Other highlights, among many, include a 2020 open call for mail art submissions and the resulting exhibition We Live in Real Time: A Window Exhibition of Mail Art Made During the Pandemic as well as the 2022 Riso Holiday Market, held at dieFirma in Cooper Square in coordination with the exhibition Printing the Future: The Riso Revolution.

We are sorry to say goodbye to our home in the East Village but look forward to continuing our work on behalf of artists’ books through our store in Chelsea, and its many programs and services. 

Note: Printed Matter / St Marks hours have changed through September 6 to accommodate the installation schedule at Swiss Institute. We will be closed weekdays through September 10, and will resume regular hours on Wednesday, September 11, coinciding with the opening of Swiss Institute’s exhibition Energies, an international group exhibition that unfolds throughout the entire building at 38 St Marks Pl and expands into numerous partner locations in the surrounding East Village community. Stay tuned for future announcements, events, and special sales taking place at Printed Matter / St Marks in the weeks ahead."

Sylvie Fleury | His Mistress' Toy

Sylvie Fleury

His Mistress' Toy

Zurich, Switzerland: Parkett Magazine, 2000

11.2 x 9.5 x 19.5 cm.

Edition of 99 signed and numbered copies [+ 15 AP]

A pair of women's polyurethane mules, with an integrated noise maker that produces a squeak sound. 

Produced for Parkett #58, the edition is split between left shoes and right shoes, for a total of ninety-nine copies. They were not intended to be sold as a pair. 

The work was initially listed on the publishers site as ‘sold out’, but now a few copies are available for the price of €2,500.00.

“Sylvie Fleury’s ‘studio work’ thus takes place in all the various realms of social added-value production and fetishization, and she whirls together—codes pertaining to fashion, art, high and low culture, models of male and female self-configuration—appropriating and playing with self-images, life-models, and forms of existence in styling and manner that in effect pulverizes every last hierarchy of sex, class, and genre.”

- Beatrix Ruf, Parkett No. 58

Ulises Carrión | Dear Reader. Don’t Read

[Ulises Carrión]

Dear Reader. Don’t Read

Madrid, Spain: Museo Reina Sofía, 2016

272 pp., 19 x 27 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

Dear Reader. Don’t Read traces the activities of Ulises Carrión from his early career as a young, successful writer in Mexico, to his numerous activities in Amsterdam where he co-founded the city’s first independent artist' run space In-Out Center, and the legendary bookshop-gallery Other Books and So (1975–79). The title includes texts by longtime Carrión collaborators Guy Schraenen and Felipe Ehrenberg, among others. 

The out-of-print volume also includes an audio CD, featuring audio from Carrión’s 1977 cassette The Poet’s Tongue.

Jock Reynolds | Determine the Values

Jock Reynolds

Determine the Values

New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1970?????

9.3 x 12 x 1.2 cm.

Edition size unknown

Jock Reynolds - who up until fairly recently served as the director of the Yale University Art Gallery for twenty years - produced three editions for Fluxus, two of which were subtitled Flux-tests. This one pits a pearl against a pebble. “The implications are obvious,” writes curator Jon Hendricks in the invaluable book Fluxus Codex. 

George Maciunas designed the label. His sketches (in the collection of MoMA) for the work are below. 

And apparently Harvard has taken to using AI to write their image descriptions now: 

"This image appears to be of an object resembling a small suitcase or briefcase, with the front panel displaying what looks like a printed graphic or possibly a collage designed to mimic the front panel of an electronic device or instrument. The design features various elements typical of electronic control panels, such as dials, gauges, and switches, all arranged in a symmetrical pattern. At the top left corner appears a rectangular screen with the word "FLUXTUS" inside, suggesting a connection to the Fluxus art movement. Beneath the central screen, the text reads "DETERMINE THE VALUES." Bottom-center of the panel shows the name "BY JOCK REYNOLDS." The overall look is industrial, possibly meant to evoke a sense of technical equipment or machinery, with the design rendered in a dotted style that is reminiscent of a halftone print. The object is closed and clasped, and the background on which it rests is not visible in the photograph."

Cosey Fanni Tutti | A Study In Scarlet

Cosey Fanni Tutti

A Study In Scarlet

Conspiracy International, 1987

14 x 22 cm., 56 min

Edition of 160 numbered copies

A VHS cassette containing four live commissioned ‘actions’ by the artist, between the years 1983 and 1986. 

DIORAMA 

21st August 1983, London

A ritual of transformation and awakening within the walls of the only existing original 'diorama' building in London.

SUCH IS LIFE 

27th & 29th September 1984, Bloomsbury Theatre, London

A celebration of the body and mind. The admission of sexual awakening and freedom. A tribute to the works of Georges Bataille. This performance was part of the 'Violent Silence' festival which included readings, films, music and performance from people who work with the same freedom of thought.

OPINIONS 

15th August 1985, Zap Club, Brighton

As always the actions are improvised and feed off the energy and attitude absorbed prior to the event.

The video was shot through cling film and a live mix was projected above the stage onto a 6' screen.

PUSSY GOT THE CREAM 

6th March 1986, Zap Club, Brighton

A video piece specially commissioned for the 'taboo' festival.

Douglas Gordon | KITTELMANN & GORDON

Douglas Gordon

KITTELMANN & GORDON

Cologne, Germany: Kölnischer Kunstverein, 1999

10 x 3.5 cm.

Edition of 200

Shortly after winning the Turner Prize in 1996, Douglas Gordon was invited to present a solo exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein, in Cologne, Germany. This multiple accompanied the exhibition. 

Four shot glasses are emblazoned with the last names of the artist and of Udo Kittelmann, then the director of the institution (and later the director of the National Gallery in Berlin). Is the work a sly reference to the fact that drinking with the director advances one’s career? Seems unlikely. 

The publisher is selling individual copies for € 40,00, here. 

Bob Cobbing | Sensations of the Retina

Bob Cobbing

Sensations of the Retina 

Toronto, Canada: Ganglia Press, 1978

[16] pp., 8 3/4 x 11 1/8”, loose leaves

Edition of 200

Eight unbound A4 leaves (most double-sided) housed inside a translucent blue plastic folder. Published as grOnk 15 by the publishing imprint founded by bpNichol and Dave Aylward.

 

Available for $100 US, from The Idea of the Book, here. 

Roman Signer | Explosion

Roman Signer

Explosion

Lucerne: Edizioni Periferia, 1995

4 x 65 x 13 cm.

Signed and numbered edition

Wooden splinters from a blown-up crate in a linen box.

I can’t seem to confirm the edition size (though it’s at least 70, one of the numbers above) and it appears that the multiple may have been a companion to a hardcover book of the same name.