Avalanche [1970-1976 Facsimile Edition]

[Willoughby Sharp, Liza Béar, eds]

Avalanche [1970-1976 Facsimile Edition]

New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2010

1016 pp., 26.7 x 49.5 x 6.35 cm., boxed

Edition of 1000

Avalanche was a New York City-based arts magazine that published thirteen issues between 1970 and 1976. The periodical was co-founded and co-edited by Willoughby Sharp and Liza Béar, with the aim to cover conceptual art, minimal art, land art and performance art, from the perspective of the artist. 

Eschewing art criticism as an editorial principle, the magazine featured interviews with artists - sixty-one in total - all but three of which were conducted by either Béar, Sharp, or both together. 

The editors' attention to detail became legendary. To prepare for their interview with sculptor Barry Le Va, they asked the artist to identify his ten favourite books, and then proceeded to read them all. 

Among the featured artists were Vito Acconci, Laurie Anderson, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Daniel Buren, Hanne Darboven, Walter De Maria, Jan Dibbets, Barbara Dilley, Simone Forti, General Idea, Gilbert & George, Philip Glass, Hans Haacke, Jannis Kounellis, Meredith Monk, Barry Le Va, Sol LeWitt, Richard Long, Gordon Matta-Clark, Bruce Nauman, Dennis Oppenheim, Yvonne Rainer, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, George Trakas, William Wegman, Lawrence Weiner, Jackie Winsor and many others. 

Revealing its precarious financial situation, the final issue of the magazine featured the company’s own financial ledger on the cover [see below]. It declared bankruptcy shortly afterwards. 

In 2010, New York publisher Primary Information (whose name suggests an affinity with Avalanche’s editorial stance of privileging artists’ writings over arts criticism) produced a boxed reprint of the complete set of 13 issues, housed in a glossy black hardcover archival box. 

"While the stated goal of Avalanche was to empower the artist, its format echoed the cult of celebrity then sweeping American popular culture. Interviews and cover shots were, after all, defining features of Playboy, Rolling Stone, and of course, Andy Warhol's Interview. Looking back, we can also see in the magazine, albeit in nascent form, the contemporary art world's infatuation with the image of the artist as star. Yet Avalanche manifests a different kind of glamour: the unmade-up, unshaven faces, and defiant, brooding expressions and demeanor suggest a collective portrait of the artist as counterculture. Though the figure of the artist was increasingly being cast as a middle-class professional (as witnessed by mainstream representations, such as the fashionable photographs of minimalist artists published in Harper's Bazaar in the mid-196os), Avalanche insisted on an alternative definition of artistic identityan identity that would prove central to the politicization of the art world during this period.3 The magazine emphasized the crossover between the antiestablishment lifestyles and politics of the 196os and 1970S and the radical artistic practices of the period. With its ad hoc feel and relatively modest circulation of around five thousand, Avalanche revealed how the quintessential publicity form of the art magazine might foster a radical counterpublic within the alternative art community centered in SoHo in the early 1970s."

- Gwen Allen

Christina Kubisch | Night Flights

Christina Kubisch

Night Flights

Groveland, USA: Important Records, 2007

12” vinyl LP

Edition size unknown

A twentieth year anniversary reissue from the flautist turned sound artist, recorded during a residency in Milan, using all manner of compositional strategies, experimental recording techniques, and homemade electronics. 

“The compositions for Night Flights were realized in Milano in the period between 1983 and 1986. Milan at that time was a vivid and experimental place, with many international (mostly American) guests performing like Robert Wilson, John Cage, Trisha Brown, The Living, Laurie Anderson, etc.. At that time we were a group of several musicians working loosely together, exchanging knowledge about custom made instruments, the latest electronic devices, rare records, and information about where to go and what to listen to.

“The lack of digital information and internet was one of the reasons for frequent meetings and musical experiments. We were determined to be the avant garde in a classical world of virtuosity. Davide Mosconi, Raffaele Serra, Riccardo Sinigaglia and others included myself had small but, seen from today’s point of view, very artistic and exotic looking studios with many strange, often non-European instruments and all kinds of keyboards, electronic drums and tape recorders. The official studios from the conservatory were not available for us but not interesting as well. We tried to make multichannel recordings and mixes by ourselves, we invented long tape loops going through the whole room, echo effects and reverb. We became specialists in cutting and manipulating tapes.

“The so-called non-European musical tradition was a permanent source of inspiration. The meeting and performances with Roberto Laneri, overtone singer and Indian music specialist, opened up new horizons. For several years I worked as well for the record company Raretone and was responsible for the release of the recordings of Giaconto Scelsi. I spent wonderful long days at his home, full with conversations about art and music. Alvin Curran, who took care of Scelsi’s tapes and archive, often came by.

“There was a special fertile atmosphere in the early eighties in Milano. Somehow all these activities and the search for new sound worlds and techniques were a vital step on the way to what today is called sound art, though the term was not common then. Some characteristics of what is defined as soundscapes or sound environment are included in Night Flights: a special interest in sound colours, musical structure based on may layers of natural recordings and the intent to open up the listener’s space even with the limited means of a vinyl recording.”  

- Christina Kubisch

Meredith Monk awarded Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement

Composer, choreographer, and performer Meredith Monk has been awarded the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement by the organizers of the Sixty-Ninth Venice Biennale Musica. 

“Meredith Monk has revolutionized music and the performing arts with an approach that has expanded the potential of the human voice, transforming it into a vehicle for unprecedented sonic exploration,” the organizers of the Biennale said in a statement. “Her wordless incantations and ability to build entire sonic worlds from the simplest gestures give rise to a dialogue between matter and spirit, between presence and transcendence. Her work cannot be confined within historical categories, but opens up a living universe of sound, in constant evolution, which appears both ancient and radically innovative at the same time.”

Mahmoud Khaled | Fantasies on a Found Phone, Dedicated to the Man Who Lost It

Mahmoud Khaled

Fantasies on a Found Phone, Dedicated to the Man Who Lost It

London, UK: Bookworks, 2022

144 pp., 10.6 x 17.8 cm., softcover

Edition of 1000

Recalling the work of Hans-Peter Feldmann and Sophie Calle, the images and texts in this artist book/catalogue come from an unlocked phone found in a public toilet. The publication accompanies Mahmoud Khaled‘s first UK solo exhibition of the same name, at The Mosaic Rooms. 

"Moving between the erotic, intimate, baroque and everyday, the compulsive sequence of images references the dissonant and voyeuristic experience of scrolling through social media and swiping in dating apps, and the clash of hyper-capitalist forces of productivity and technology with the intimacy of a queer male gaze.”

- publisher’s blurb

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