The Book Affair
The Book Affair is a two day independent publishing fair held at the Library of San Lorenzo, Venice, May 30-31, 2013. The mission of The Book Affair is to act as a platform for engagement with and critical exploration of the artist’s book, and includes a series of conferences – with among others David Reinfurt & Stuart Bailey, and David Horvitz – and an exhibition organized with the idea of examining the production of books in contemporary art. The exhibition “Artist’s books. A parallel story”, curated by Giorgio Maffei, Italian curator and historian, uses the book media with the intention of offering a different way of conveying art history to the public.
Sainte-Victoire – Corporate Identity
Sainte-Victoire – Corporate Identity – May 15-31, 2013, Galerie de l’erg, Brussels – is the first exhibition project proposed by Musée des Erreurs, recently opened by the artist Pierre Leguillon, who’s always been concerned about building new tools dedicated to images and their dissemination.
The title of this exhibition refers to a statement in a letter Hamilton wrote in 1980: “My admiration for the work of Dieter Rams is intense and I have, for many years, been uniquely attracted towards his sensibility; so much so that his consumer products have to come to occupy a place in my heart and my conscioussness that the Mont Saint-Victoire did in Cezanne’s.”
The different identities gathered in Sainte-Victoire are presented in a way as to reflect into one another. Beyond singular identities, there is the idea of images from brands or corporate identity that is also at play. Between subjectivity, style and function, the designer also works at sculpting, shaping and interpreting the concept of the company he is working for. However, the shape this concept takes derives from inspiration mechanisms, cultural settings, reference searches, which in turn nourish different artistic practices and fields of creation. In view of that, the idea of « model », of « origins » ex nihilo explodes in favor of the ready-made: the creator is the one who chooses, finds, understands or subverts the way in which an object is first considered. Yet, these operations happen through a flux of multiple sources which the Musée des Erreurs is trying to crystallise…
Architektur für Kinder
The Playground Project, curated by Gabriela Burkhalter, is a richly illustrated exhibition exploring the history of postwar playground design and highlighting important examples of playgrounds from the 20th century. The survey focuses on the years between 1940 and 1980 as the most fruitful era in playground design and introduces outstanding achievements from Europe, the US, and Japan. More than 130 photographs, prints, plans, models, and books, along with eleven films and slideshows, will illustrate the exciting and inspiring history of playgrounds, from June 10, 2013, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
Art & Leisure and Art & Leisure – Dante Carlos
Art & Leisure and Art & Leisure presents work by graphic designer Dante Carlos, May 24 – July 11, 2013, London Centre for Book Arts. The exhibition will centre on an editioned book, displayed in the space, as well as available for purchase, and Dante Carlos will use the form and function of a calendar to create a casual polemic and a reorganization of days.
THE WHOLE EARTH – EXHIBITION
The image of the “blue planet”, a new perspective of the earth as seen from the outside, is one of the most popular images in history. This image, more than any other, has shaped the popular notion of the age of the “whole world” and globalization, from a worldwide society linked by the Internet to the current debate on the climate. Using artworks and materials from cultural history, the exhibition will critically explore the application of ecological-systemic concepts to society, politics, and aesthetics.
The exhibition The Whole Earth – until July 1, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin – is one of the first to explore the history of the photograph of the “blue planet”, and reflects in a comprehensive way the power of the Whole Earth Catalog…
Two in the Wave – Cahier 2 – CC
The exhibition Two in the Wave, with works by with Thomas Jenkins and Batia Suter – until May 25, PrintRoom, Rotterdam – presents two works concerned with the artistic treatment of printed–matter and the book in light of our surrounding seas, oceans and the connotations these seemingly boundless expanses put forward. As advanced by the two works, there is a sensible retreat from the documentary image to its recovery in the element of the fictional.
The exhibition is accompanied by a number of artist publications and bookworks sharing a similar resonance and topicality, employed to showcase different perspectives and entries on the artistic engagement with bound volumes and the aquatic. In addition, the publication Cahier 2 – CC features a selected correspondence between Niekolaas Johannes Lekkerkerk, curator of the exhibition, and Thomas Jenkins, revolving around the work The Seas and Oceans of The World.
Please Come to the Show, Part I (1960–1980)
Since its beginnings, the MoMA Library has housed several collections of artists’ files and subject files, which contain assorted printed ephemera like announcement cards, press clippings, posters, and flyers. These materials illustrate an elaborate range of artistic activities and can contain unique elements from an artist’s practice.
This two-part exhibition Please Come to the Show – Part I (1960–1980), May 8 – July 15, 2013, MoMA, New York – gathers a sample of innovative printed invitations, small posters, and flyers from the early 1960s to the present. The selection traces ways in which artists, designers, and galleries have used invitation cards and other printed announcements as a part of the staging of conceptual works, installations, performances, and other time-based events and screenings. This diverse grouping of ephemera explores the various, surprising ways that we have been invited to experience art.
Nicholas Gottlund – MAKE READY
“I come from a family of printers. If I consider myself a printer, that would make me the sixth generation printer in my family. I worked in their printing plant for a few years. In doing the make-ready or set up of any task, whether it be printing, folding or binding there is a certain amount of waste; bad impressions, misalignment, not enough bleed, roller marks–all sorts of imperfections. To account for this is part of the job and extras are made–Overs.
This concept of Overs is something that I carry into my own book making. Even when making a unique or one off, I will make two copies; an A and a B. That way I’m covered in case something goes awry. Often though, things go smoothly and I’m left with all my Overs. This body of work draws on these aspects of the printing process to highlight a level of detail contained in the make-ready, the edition and the Overs. It is how these separate yet linked objects relate to one another when viewed in the same space that demonstrates their making most clearly.
For each book on display, there is a companion piece. The works in this exhibition -
MAKE READY – As & Bs, A Series of Pairs, April 18 – May 1, 2013, KARMA, New York – both extrapolate upon the bound book as well as transform their materials by means of folding, cutting, exposing and overprinting–all methods that are routinely used in the production of the book. Through the manipulation of the method, the material, the tool and the reference, attention is brought back to the detail. It is not the detail–ing as in the addition of embellishment or of a final once over, but the inherent palpable quality of process made evident.” Nicholas Gottlund
Thick As A Brick
Thick As A Brick presents a selection of more than 100 catalogues, books, art editions and zines published by Mousse and shown within three brick structures conceived by Kuehn Malvezzi and produced by the Danish company Petersen Tegl. On view until April 14, Giò Marconi, Milan.
At the end of the last century, it was thought the new millennium would be represented in design and architecture by incorporeal values such as lightness, transparency, and evanescence, inspired by the fluidity of communication as well as the intangible nature of finance. The world seemed intent on becoming liquid. Instead, in the last few years everything has changed.
The economic crisis has profoundly modified our society and hence transformed the approach to architecture and culture at large: the world is seeking a new firmness, a solidity that both architecture and design (as well as art, fashion, and cuisine – some of the most interesting expressions of human culture) are making the center of their practice. Human beings are looking for reliable new touchstones, getting back to basics, to find that stability in which it seems necessary to root (or maybe better to re-root) our society. Traditions and history serve as a point of departure to grow and develop, better than before, and concreteness is the new manifesto for contemporary cultures in Western and even in the Eastern world.
Thick As A Brick goes back to simple, manual practices and ancestral materials – such as the brick used here as a narrative device – and to ancient, basic ideas in order to rediscover their potential: projected into the future, such renewed values serve as a groundwork to literally build a new encyclopedia of balance, strength, and positivity. In this project, these basic materials are replaced by books, iconic tools for spreading knowledge down through the centuries…
Project Projects: Test Fit
Commissioned as part of a series in which architects and designers are invited to explore their own interests as a way to instigate new thinking and practices within and beyond their professional disciplines, the exhibition Test Fit provided the graphic design firm
Project Projects the opportunity to use the permanent collection of the Art Institute of chicago as a means of investigating the curatorial process and issues related to exhibition design.
The studio was initially inspired by the mock-ups that curators often produce when preparing the layout of an exhibition. Driven also by the unusual characteristics of the Kurokawa Gallery, which is a well-trafficked, transitional space between the Modern Wing and other parts of the museum, Project Projects decided to develop a model of an exhibition that could serve as a framework for addressing issues of representation and reproductions in a playful, yet critical way.
The studio’s selection of works is based on the personal concerns of its partners, as expressed in the accompanying texts they have written. Although they began with an interest in European modernism, as imported to Chicago in the mid-twentieth century by such practitioners as László Moholy-Nagy and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the present collection of works speaks more broadly to Project Projects’ own interest in the history of design practice. Using a consistent format of printed facsimiles at a one-to-one scale, the studio encourages viewers to consider this exhibition as a mode of creative and cultural expression in and of itself.
The exhibition is on view until April 28, Art Institute of Chicago, and Project Projects (Prem Krishnamurthy, Adam Michaels, & Rob Giampietro) will give a lecture April 16, 6.30pm.
Karl Nawrot: Mind Walk #I
An array of drawings and prints reveal graphic designer and illustrator Karl Nawrot’s aesthetic sensibility as a curious union of the macabre and the childlike. These monochrome pictures are various: elementary graphics made with crude stencils and other drawing devices and the occasional distorted figure.
The exhibition Karl Nawrot: Mind Walk #I – April 19 – May 18, 2013, Eastside Projects, Birmingham – suggests narrative paths through this material, presenting Nawrot’s work as an expanded comic.
Veronika Spierenburg – THIS BOOK (1) & (2), In Order of Pages, Between Handle and Blade
THIS BOOK is an investigation series of Zurich based performance artist Veronika Spierenburg asking different people about their book projects by contacting them on Skype. The aim of the talks is to reflect current book production in the art field and to get a deeper understanding of motivations behind productions.
THIS BOOK (1), April 4, 7pm, Corner College, Zurich will have as guests Loraine Furter, Thijs Wassink, Matthew Vollgraff, Haemmerli, Ari Marcopoulos, Michael Günzburger. For THIS BOOK (2), May 3, 7pm, at Corner College, guests will be Banu Cennetoglu, Rafael Rozendaal, Manuel Raeder, Fabrice Stroun, San Seriffe.
Veronika Spierenburg has also regularly been visiting the Art Library in the Sitterwerk, in St.Gallen, for the day since 2010. She often works in a site-specific manner, as she also did in the Sitterwerk, where she became the “collector of the collection”. Individual pages of books from the Art Library, of which she has recorded a total of some 30,000, are her personal inventory. Then she reduced in collaboration with the Graphic Designer Simone Koller this selection further to a specific compilation, which is now—simultaneous to the exhibition—being published as an artist’s book: In Order of Pages, Kodoji Press, Baden.
The exhibition Between Handle and Blade – May 05 – June 23, 2013, Sitterwerk, St.Gallen – consists of individual interventions that examine the book as subject matter or refer to it in a broader sense. The focal point of the exhibition will be a three-meter-tall reading wheel made of metal. This object thus makes reference to the engineer Agostino Ramelli (1531–1600). Ramelli drew the plan for a mechanical reading aid around 1588, which was published along with 194 construction drawings in the book Le diverse et artificiose machine and is today considered to be a classic on the engineering of the sixteenth century. In the exhibition, the parallel reading and looking at individual book pages by means of the reading wheel becomes a direct reference to the publication by Veronika Spierenburg…
The End(s) of the Library: The Serving Library
The End(s) of the Library is a series of commissioned installations, lectures, performances, and workshops that consider the state of the library taking place at the Goethe-Institut New York Library. The contributors had addressed how previous library configurations have given way to new forms and revised values in the digital age, emphasizing the fact that the library is neither a monolithic system nor an abandoned utopia, but an ever-contested site demanding new readings of its organizational frameworks: an institution whose ends are without end.
The Serving Library is a cooperatively-built archive that assembles itself by publishing. Its house journal, Bulletins of The Serving Library, is produced as a composite printed/electronic publication released first online as a series of individual PDF “bulletins” from www.servinglibrary.org over a six-month period, then assembled, printed, and distributed twice a year in the United States and Europe. Each issue of the journal assembles around a loose theme.
As part of The End(s) of the Library, The Goethe-Institut New York Library is both sponsor and catalyst for the fifth issue, whose ostensible theme will be “Germany.” It will be compiled and edited during spring 2013 by The Serving Library’s founders, Stuart Bailey, Angie Keefer, and David Reinfurt, and will be launched at the Goethe-Institut New York Library at the start of the summer. In advance of this publication, The Serving Library’s archive of artifacts, variously drawn from previous issues of the journal and its forerunner Dot Dot Dot, will be on view at the Goethe-Institut New York Library from April 1 to June 21, 2013.
Books &Foam
©Display: Terribly awesome photobooks, Paul Kooiker & Erik Kessels, Art Paper Editions
Books &Foam – March 28 to May 26, 2013, Foam, Amsterdam – will be placing a large selection of photography books from the Netherlands in the spotlight with special presentations to shed light on the design process, with installations, book signing sessions and a selection of recent international photo books.
?Among others, visitors will gain insight into the design process of six yet-to-be-published photo books. Showing the first ideas and sketches, email correspondence between photographer and designer, dummies and test prints provide an associative view into the design process… Dutch and international experts from the world of photography have also been invited to provide a ‘curated bookshelf’, containing their choices for the five best photo books of 2012…
Point of Sale
Point of Sale, curated by Karly Wildenhaus and designed by Studio Manuel Raeder is a display structure based on Friedrich Kiesler‘s chair.
Point of Sale operates as a functioning bookshop for the duration of less like an object more like the weather, March 24 to May 26, 2013, Hessel Museum of Art, New York.
The bookshop’s display structure is the result of a site-specific commission by Studio Manuel Raeder, which focuses on close collaborations with artists, designers, curators, theorists, and musicians in a wide range of formats that include exhibitions, publications, type design, and furniture design.
For Point of Sale, the Studio has designed a setting that can function simultaneously as a retail operation, reading room, and social space and has adapted existing structural elements from the Hessel Museum of Art.
The inventory of Point of Sale has been selected in relation to the concurrent spring exhibitions and their participant’s respective conceptual investments.
Point of Sale presents and circulates various art publishing efforts through processes of economic exchange, to activate the intersection between art, entrepreneurship, and publishing—particularly as it has occurred and continues to occur through CCS Bard’s expanded network. In this way, the bookshop as a site within the art institution’s infrastructure has become available for curatorial and economic intervention.
The Independent Group: Parallel of Art & Life
Parallel of Life and Art, 1953
The Independent Group met at the original ICA in Dover Street from 1952-5. Celebrated today as the so-called Fathers of Pop, they worked with art, science, technology and popular culture. From horror films to theories of evolution, modern architecture to Marilyn Monroe, this group project worked beyond traditional boundaries and conventional disciplinary areas.
The exhibitions organised by the group were highly innovative, both in terms of layout and the range of objects displayed. The Independent Group shows introduced the new age of modernity and mass culture to the gallery space. Reflecting the Group’s collage mentality, new technology and high end design were juxtaposed with avant-garde art.
The exhibition The Independent Group: Parallel of Art & Life – March 27 – June 9, 2013, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London – will include paintings, drawings and photographs by John McHale, Magda Cordell, Nigel Henderson, Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton, alongside related designed objects and ephemera from the Independent Group. Evoking the ICA’s original home in Dover Street in the 1950s, the exhibition will be designed to give viewers a sense of ‘The Home of the Avant Garde’ which first attracted this collection of creative practitioners. In addition, a two day conference will bring together leading researchers, practitioners and curators who are working on aspects of the Independent Group. The aim will be to consider ways in which the Independent Group have been, and continue to be, exhibited.
ALMA GESTES
ALMA GESTES – le 15 Mars, à partir de 19h, Rosa Brux, Bruxelles – rassemble des artistes, designeur-es, théoricien-nes, critiques d’art invité-es à exposer une liste de documents et d’ouvrages issus de leurs bibliothèques personnelles.
Avec Dorothée Baumann, Delphine Bedel, Juliana Borinski, Charlotte Cheetham et Pierre Vanni, Eva Fabbris, Marie Frampier, Jean-Baptiste Ganne, Benjamin Hugard, Pierre Leguillon, Balthazar Lovay, Ceel Mogami de Haas, Nicolas Moulin, Raphaelle Müeller, Florence Ostende, Marie Reinert, Gilles Rotzetter, Fabrice Samyn, Frédéric Wecker.
Tout en évitant l’écueil que peuvent représenter les anthologies constituées de livres de prédilection, chacune des listes explore diverses formes d’énonciations, allant du geste manifeste à la collection monomaniaque, en passant par des agencements dont l’heureux hasard raccommode les thèses les plus antagonistes. Tels des portraits composites, chaque inventaire dresse autant de points de vue sur les pratiques des personnes invitées, autant de discours plurivoques à recomposer.
Dans un geste similaire au principe qui a vu naître ce projet, l’exposition emprunte son titre à la première œuvre littéraire du philosophe français Alain Badiou. Livre qui expose les tribulations de divers personnages embarqués dans une pluralité de mondes possibles à partir desquels ils tentent de construire leur propre langage. Une bibliothèque apparaît comme une promesse qui, au-delà des savoirs réifiés, patiemment glanés et listés, présage avant tout des actions dont on sera dans l’avenir capable.
Permutation 03.2: Re-Place
©Åbäke
The exhibition space P!, New York, will conduct an extended inquiry into the nature and means of copying. Remakes vs knockoffs, transcription vs plagiarism, mimesis vs mimicry — the status of the copied act shifts from positive to negative and back again, depending on context and culture. Multiples of a religious or political icon extend their reach and efficacy, whereas a duplicated file, painting, handbag, or cityscape violates legal and ethical strictures. Questions of capital and power lie at the core: who owns the original vs who is producing the copy.
Offering counterpoints from disparate cultural positions, P! explores the copy through a cycle of events and exhibitions.
Permutation 03.2: Re-Place, from March 8 to April 14, 2013, is the second exhibition of P!’s six-month cycle on copying focuses on replicas, remakes, and recurrences. Margaret Lee’s uncanny storefront display juxtaposes graphic backdrop painting with simulated fruit, while Oliver Laric premieres a new Mandarin version of his distributed video essay, Versions (2009–onward). London-based collective Åbäke captures plaster molds for a Danish/Chinese Pieta in “hacked intaglio”, and Amie Siegel’s Berlin Remake (2005) approaches East German filmic precedents as contemporary scores for reprise and re-performance. The presentation of these disparate works at P! establishes frameworks for considering authenticity and origination across a variety of cultural contexts.
L.I.E Outpost Crate No.1
L.I.E (Library of Independent Exchange), a temporary arts reference library, presents, at The Newbridge Project, Newcastle, until February 15, L.I.E Outpost Crate No.1, featuring a selection of titles from L.I.E’s permanent collection, 3 Script works, as well as twenty ’10 Favourite Books’ lists, with contributions from Ed Ruscha, Katrina Brown, New Jerseyy, Olivia Plender, Charlotte Cheetham, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Jem Southam, Jeff Eaton, Benjamin Sommerhalder, Lionel Bovier, James Jenkin, OMMU, Marco Kane Braunschweiler, Layla Tweedie-Cullen, Jeremy Millar, Alec Finlay, Fraser Muggeridge, Torpedo Press, An Endless Supply, Axel Wieder.
Crystal Maze IV – ’1+2+3=3′ – Notre distraction favorite
En écho au travail de Pierre Faucheux (1924-1999), graphiste et directeur artistique dont la production fleuve s’étend des années 1950 aux années 1990, Crystal Maze IV – ’1+2+3=3′ – Notre distraction favorite – exposition, projections, lectures, 21 février – 11 mars 2013, Centre Pompidou, Paris – proposé par l’Agence du doute (Catherine Guiral, Brice Domingues, Jérôme Dupeyrat) est un labyrinthe où se rencontrent des objets, des images et des voix. Sur le principe du montage, ce dispositif réunit des créateurs dont les œuvres sont la trace d’un désir visuel trouvant satisfaction dans l’usage et le dépaysement des images. (+ d’infos sur Crystal Maze I, II & III)
La proposition est enrichie de conférences, discussions et programmation de films, qui composent tous ensemble un Crystal dont le spectateur est invité à observer les facettes.
L’agencement de ces créations et les différents évènements qui accompagnent cette proposition mettent en évidence une culture visuelle et des procédés communs à un ensemble de graphistes, d’artistes, de photographes, de cinéastes, dont les travaux s’étendent du tout début du XXe siècle jusqu’à aujourd’hui et peuvent faire l’objet de rapprochements, parfois inattendus, tant sur le plan formel que conceptuel.
Il ne s’agit pas de mettre à jour des emprunts (qui, lorsqu’ils existent, sont souvent réciproques), ni d’établir des généalogies entre les pratiques mais de montrer ce que des travaux dont le rapprochement est parfois évident, parfois forcé, peuvent avoir de références communes ou de procédés partagés et comment ils constituent ensemble un pan de notre culture visuelle contemporaine.
Les contours de cette culture visuelle ont été identifiés à partir du travail du graphiste Pierre Faucheux, en particulier ses “écartelages” et le travail réalisé avec son atelier pour les couvertures du Livre de Poche. Ces travaux sont souvent sous-tendus par des emprunts iconographiques et des procédés tels que la déchirure, le découpage, le collage, le montage, la colorisation : autant d’opérations graphiques et plastiques qui dépaysent les images pour les offrir à d’autres registres et pour lesquelles le travail de Pierre Faucheux constitue une matrice inépuisable…