Herman de Vries | Random Shapes

Herman de Vries
Random Shapes
Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Stedelijk Museum, 1975
27.5 x 20.8 cm.
Edition of 2200

A folded card folio containing 10 loose leaf cardboard pieces, random in shape. The publication was produced to accompany an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum that ran between February 7th and April 6th, 1975. For much of this decade the museum produced artist books in lieu of catalogues, or artist book/catalogue hybrids. The folio also includes a folded sheet of A4 paper with biographic information about the artist, and another with information about the exhibition, including the 61 pieces in the show. Both are in both Dutch and English.

I can't track down where I learned of the edition size, which seems high. The work would have been cheap to produce, but I'm can't imagine that high a demand, at the time.

On Tumblr: Jenny Holzer

http://artistsbooksandmultiples.tumblr.com/tagged/jenny-holzer

DADA Egg Cup

A miniature Duchamp-style bone china urinal as egg cup, by designer Peter Ibruegger. Available at the MoMA gift shop:

https://store.moma.org/mobile/product/productDetails.form?productId=255061&categoryId=26673

Maurizio Cattelan | L.O.V.E.

Maurizio Cattelan

L.O.V.E.

Cicognara, Italy: Seletti, 2015

40 x 18.03 x 18.03 cm.

Open edition

Last week the Italian sculptor Arturo Di Modica, who produced the  7000-pound bronze Wall Street Stock Exchange statue Charging Bull, charged that the Fearless Girl sculpture placed in front of it's path "corrupts the artistic integrity" of his work. He is demanding that it be removed. 

The stock exchange in Italy also features a contentious public monument - L.O.V.E. by Maurizio Cattelan. It consists of a four metre high marble hand missing three fingers, with the middle finger remaining and erect. It sits on a base that brings the work to a height of 11 metres. L.O.V.E. stands for Libertà, Odio, Vendetta, Eternità, which translates to Freedom, Hate, Vengeance, Eternity. 

Installed in 2010, the sculpture was - like Fearless Girl - originally intended to be on display for only a few weeks, but local government extended its stay. The Borsa Italiana is located in Milan, the third-largest market for contemporary art after London and New York City. A search of Google maps reveals that the work is currently (or as recently as the last Google car drive by) wrapped in a pink Cancer Awareness ribbon. 

This 2015 cast cement version is produced as a 1:28 model of the original. It is listed as an open edition, but copies are already selling for upwards of $1500 at auction. Some sites list than only 200 were produced. 

L.O.V.E.  is also available as a snowglobe and music box. 

Iain Baxter Exhibition Poster

Iain Baxter
[redacted exhibition poster]
Toronto, Canada: Lake Galleries/Gallery Moos, 1994
19”W x 25”H
Edition size unknown

The above poster was created for an exhibition between neighbouring galleries owned by Don Lake and Walter Moos in the mid-nineties. I worked for Lake Galleries shortly after this exhibition took place, and if I recall the story correctly, upon seeing the poster design - featuring the artist as a kind of travelling sex toy salesman - Moos refused to participate and demanded his name removed.

This dildo poster then becomes an unusual provenance copy, as it is signed to David Moos, Walter's son and eventual AGO curator of contemporary art, and co-curator of Baxter&'s major retrospective IAIN BAXTER&: Works 1958–2011. 

It's available from an Ebay seller in North York, here, for a hundred dollars.

Aryen Hoekstra | On The Flicker

Aryen Hoekstra
On The Flicker
Toronto, Canada, Self-published, 2017
42 x 590 cm.
Edition of 240

Tony Conrad died a year and a week ago, of prostate cancer, at age 76. One of his best known works, The Flicker, celebrated it's fiftieth anniversary that year. Produced with the help of Jonas Mekas, the 30-minute film took months to design and a few days to shoot. Apart from three title cards, The Flicker consists of only two frames. The first title is a warning that the producer, distributor, and exhibitors waive all liability for physical or mental injury:

"Since this film may induce epileptic seizures or produce mild symptoms of shock treatment in certain persons, you are cautioned to remain in the theatre only at your own risk. A physician should be in attendance."

Then "Tony Conrad Presents," and "The Flicker". At this point the screen goes white and flickers with a black frame, producing a stroboscopic effect that induced headaches and vomiting from some viewers. It is widely celebrated as a masterpiece of early structuralist filmmaking.


On The Flicker is Aryen Hoekstra's fictional account of attending a screening of the film. It exists as a free takeaway poster which forms the basis of his exhibition The Flicker, which opens tonight at YYZ Artist’s Outlet in Toronto. The text, written as part of a Banff writers residency, is at the centre of the exhibition, which also includes a suite of 24 paintings produced in collaboration with his partner Jennifer Carvalho, and a series of "objects and gestures" within the gallery intended as speculative sites against which the text might be considered.

"I’d arrived in Banff with the intention of writing a longer essay on Tony Conrad’s The Flicker (1965-66), anticipating that I’d use that film as a prompt from which to enter an extended discussion on light and dark, image and interval, and projection and speculation; a way to tease out themes already bubbling under and at the surface of my practice. The text had other ideas about what it should be and instead transformed itself into a short fiction set at a screening of Conrad’s film."

The exhibition opened Wednesday, with a reception tonight from 5 to 8 pm. Hoekstra will present a reading before a 16mm screening of Conrad's The Flicker at CineCycle (129 Spadina Ave) at 5:00pm tomorrow, Saturday April 15th.

For more information, visit the YYZ site here and the artist's website, here.