Endre Tót: Gladness and Rain

[Endre Tót]

Endre Tót: Gladness and Rain

New York City, USA: Printed Matter, 2023

24 pp., 38 x 24 cm., softcover

Edition of 200

Two of the artist’s favourite concerns (the third being ‘zero’) are addressed in this publication: being glad [see earlier posts here and here] and typewriter rain [here]. 

The booklet was published on the occasion of the Printed Matter exhibition of the same name, which ran from September 9th to November 14th, 2021 [see below]. 

The risograph-printed and hand-stamped publication includes highlights from the show, an essay by Darling Green, and an interview with Tót, translated into English for the first time. It reproduces full size facsimiles of many of Tót’s printed, typed, stamped, and mailed works from the 1970s and 80s.

Lenka Clayton | How We Thought It Would Be And How It Was

Lenka Clayton

How We Thought It Would Be And How It Was

Atlanta, USA: J&L Books, 2025

48 pp., 29.2 x 24.2 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

My favorite representational works made using the typewriter come from Pittsburgh artist Lenka Clayton. Since 2012, she has produced more than five-hundred delicate drawings using a 1957 portable Smith-Corona Skyriter typewriter. 

This book collects twenty-three of them, made during the early days of the Covid pandemic. Subjects include the artist's grandmother’s thumb on the camera during a Zoom call, kitchen haircuts, quarantined mail, empty galleries, empty supermarket shelves, kitchen tea towels repurposed as face masks, and the ongoing struggle to remain optimistic. 

The book shares its title with an online exhibition at Catharine Clark Gallery. It is designed by Jason Fulford, who runs J&L Books with his partner Leanne Shapton.

How We Thought It Would Be And How It Was is available for $30 US from Printed Matter, here. 

Clayton is featured in the season finale of Art21’s Art in the Twenty-First Century, the first series on television in the U.S. to focus exclusively on contemporary visual art and artists. The episode is titled Human Nature and is slated to air later this month. 

Erin Cosgrove | The Baader-Meinhof Affair

Erin Cosgrove

The Baader-Meinhof Affair

New York City, USA: Printed Matter Inc., 2003

248 pp., 17 x 10.5 cm., softcover

Edition of 3000

The first publication from Printed Matter's Publishing Program for Emerging Artists parodies the romance novel with a tempestuous tale of true love and terrorism. In the cloistered environment of an exclusive East Coast college, students fall in love while romancing the ghosts of the '70s Germany's Baader-Meinhof gang. 

The Red Army Faction, as they would later be called, were born from the radical student movement of the late sixties, and 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. 

"Erin Cosgrove’s take on romantic fiction as conceptual art project, The Baader-Meinhof Affair, sounds like The Rules of Attraction if Bret Easton Ellis had gone to Williams instead of Bennington."

- Greg Allen

Printed Matter sales catalogues

Lawrence Weiner | Learn to Read Art

Lawrence Weiner

Learn to Read Art

New York City, USA: Printed Matter, Inc., 1999

2 x 2.5 cm.

Edition size unknown

An enamel pin produced to benefit Printed Matter bookstore. 

 

Printed Matter

A letter written fifty years ago today that precipitated the founding of Printed Matter Bookstore. 

Printed Matter’s LA Art Book Fair Opens Tonight