Claes Oldenburg | Profile Airflow

Claes Oldenburg

Profile Airflow

Los Angeles, USA: Gemini G.E.L., 1969

85.7 x 166.5 x 9.3 cm

Edition of 75 signed, numbered, dated and titled copies [+ 6 AP]

Oldenburg once noted that making a multiple was "the sculptor's solution to making a print." Profile Airflow, from 1969, combined both: it is a molded polyurethane relief over a lithograph on paper, stretched onto a wooden strainer.

The work was the first of numerous collaborations with Gemini GEL, and can be considered an amalgamation of his two earliest multiples. Oldenburg revisits the vacuum-formed plastic of the California Ray Guns (1963 - 1964) and the subject matter of Airflow (1966). The latter was a work for the cover of Art News, February 1966. The piece was intended to be cut out and folded into the the shape of a box.

For Profile Airflow, Oldenburg wanted a relief that was "transparent like a swimming pool, but of a consistency like flesh". Gemini GEL's Ken Tyler was reportedly a "dedicated experimenter" and after two years was able to produce the work to the artist's satisfaction.  However, a year later —with most of the edition sold—the polyurethane compound began to discolour,  and become brittle. The works were immediately recalled and remade.

One of the recalled copies sold at Phillips in 2012 for £31,250. Two years later, Robert Breer (the son of Carl Breer, who designed the Airflow automobile for Chrysler), sold his example of the edition at at Sotheby's. Against a valuation of $80,000-120,000, the work sold for sold for $125,000 US.

Sophie Calle | The Address Book

Sophie Calle
The Address Book
Los Angeles, USA: Gemini G.E.L., 2009
35.6 x 39.4 x 3.8 cm.
Edition of 45

In June 1983, Sophie Calle found a lost address book on the street in Paris. She promptly returned it to it's owner, but not before photocopying the contents. She then began contacting the people listed in the book and asking to meet, to discuss Pierre, the book's owner. Some refused (a Louis S. exclaimed over the phone “I’ll have no part in this! It’s an outrage!”) but others were more than happy to meet and divulge personal information about their friend/acquaintance/lover/etc.  One friend told Calle, for example, "His personality developed what could be called a 'dirty side'."

In August and September of 1983 the artist published accounts of these ongoing meetings in the newspaper Libération. Pierre D. threatened to sue and demanded that Libération publish nude photographs of Calle as retaliation for the invasion of his privacy. The newspaper obviously did not comply, but Calle agreed not to move forward with the complete project until after the subject's death.

He reportedly died in early 2012, the year that Siglio press released a trade edition of the Address Book. This portfolio predates that by three years, though and it's unclear how the original deal was circumvented.

This portfolio of prints consists of 28 pages, each with text and photographs, in a screenprinted binder; one etching with gold leaf, one blind embossment and one 5-color lithograph with collage. It is available for $12 000 US, from the publisher, who are donating 15% of all sales tomorrow (January 20th, the inauguration of Donald Trump) to People for the American Way.