Bob Watts | Light Flux Kit

Bob Watts
Light Flux Kit
New York City, USA: Fluxus, 1973
33 x 21.8 x 9 cm
Edition size unknown

A George Maciunas designed label on Canal Street compartmentalized box containing “peculiar light bulbs, chemical light, optics, etc.” As with most Fluxus editions, the contents varied.

Maciunas described this work in a letter to collector Hans Sohm in 1972 as “very nice item, but not cheap” and gave the price as $60.00. A year later it was listed in Fluxus newsletters as $100. The work is available from Hundertmark Gallery, here, for 4800 Euro.

Xavier Antin | Just In Time

Xavier Antin
Just In Time
London, UK: Self-published, 2010
42 pp., 21 x 29 cm., staple-bound
Edition of 100

Subtitled A Short History of Desktop Publishing, this title documents the separation of four colour printing into a history lesson of desktop publishing. The magenta for each image is first printed on a stencil duplicator (or mimeograph) from 1880, and then feeds into a Spirit Duplicator from 1923, which adds the cyan. The black is printed by a laser printer from 1969 and the yellow is then added from an inkjet printer from 1976.

Visit the artist's website, here, for more information.

The copy below (which lists itself as being from a 'second run' of 30 copies, but also is numbered 34) belongs to printer/publisher/artist/Art Metropole board member JP King. I visited his studio yesterday, alongside two students from ESA who are themselves prolific makers of 'zines and had expressed interest in his Risograph machine (see bottom picture). King calls the book his "prized possession". Visit King's Paper Pusher site, here.

Paul McCarthy | Low Life Slow Life

Paul McCarthy
Low Life Slow Life
San Francisco, USA: CCA Wattis Institute, 2010
640 pp., softcover in a Tide box
Edition size unknown

Packaged in a retro detergent box (circa 1973) this hefty volume documents a two-part exhibition at San Francisco’s CCA Wattis Institute that began in February of 2008. Curator Jens Hoffmann invited the artist to curate an exhibition of his own work, accompanied by works by other artists that he considered significant to his early-period career.

The catalogue showcases a vast range of works that have influenced McCarthy’s practice, with reproductions of artists' ephemera, personal letters, musical scores, reprinted essays and reviews from periodicals such as Artforum, Avalanche, High Performance, Vision and Parkett, and excerpts from artists' monographs spanning from the 1960s to the near-present.

The artists include Joseph Beuys, Gunter Brus, Bruce Conner, Howard Fried, Dan Graham,  Allan Kaprow (Assemblage, Environments & Happenings), Rachel Khedoori, Yves Klein (Dimanche), Tetsumi Kudo, Yayoi Kusama, Maria Lassnig, Robert Mallary, Gustav Metzger (Auto-destructive art manifesto), Bruce Nauman, Yoko Ono (Grapefruit), Lil Picard, Jason Rhoades, Dieter Roth, Barbara Smith, Stan VanDerBeek, Andy Warhol and many others.

The catalogue also includes an interview with the artist and an essay on his work by Watts Institute curator Jens Hoffmann.

Shinro Ohtake's Scrapbooks

Shinro Ohtake's Scrapbooks showcased at the 55th Venice International Art Exhibition, Venice, Italy,  2013. For a brief video tour of the works, see the youtube clip, here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RRl_tt-yuQ