Posts Tagged ‘exhibition’
THIS TOO SHALL PASS launch in Gent
I have made a new work for ‘Neighbor’, a fourteen meter wide light sculpture consisting of eight ‘digits’ mounted on 019, a former welding factory turned artist space in Gent, Belgium.
You can read more about the light sculpture and previous artists who contributed to it here.
My work is based on a text I once saw painted in large letters on the side of a building in Asbury Park, New Jersey: THIS TOO SHALL PASS. Later, I read this has its origin in Persian poetry. It is a verse with the status of being true – always, and everywhere. At the same time, it seems like a radically disruptive statement in our everyday lives, where we unthinkingly go on as if we controlled our environment.
THIS TOO SHALL PASS will launch on October 2nd around 8 PM. It will be on view until November 16th, every evening from sundown until 10 PM, on 019’s eastern facade. The address is Dok-Noord 5L in Gent. It can best be seen from across the dock (Schipperskaai). The work is 10.30 minutes long and runs in a continuous loop. With thanks to the curators, Arnout De Cleene and Michiel De Cleene. The photo above is by Michiel De Cleene.
Edit: you can now see a recording here.
Exhibition in Arles
Métamorphose(s) opens tomorrow. This is an exhibition in which Antony Cairns, Stephen Gill, Galerie Christian Berst, NSDOS, Bill Viola and myself show work in collaboration with Publicis Luxe. See the invite below.
The show is curated by Julien Frydman at Les Collatéraux in Arles and runs during the opening weeks of the Rencontres d’Arles from July 3 – 12.
I have collaborated with Guillaume Gaud of Publicis Luxe to create an interactive spatial installation based on my book of found conversational phrases A Dialogue in Useful Phrases. Two chairs will invite the audience to be actors in the work. By sitting down, a viewer will automatically cause a series of conversational phrases to start appearing (basically a monologue, as if reading only the left pages or only the right pages in the original book). When a second person sits down in the other chair, a second series of conversational phrases starts to appear in answer and a dialogue in useful phrases will ensue. This serendipitous dialogue of miscommunications will be different each time because it will be influenced by when exactly each person sits down.
Exhibition in The Crocodile
A tiny solo exhibition of mine, curated by Jason Fulford, is on view in The Crocodile. This is an exhibition that you can see and hear and imagine exclusively if you meet up with Jason personally, since he carries it on his person. It can be encountered this way from May 23 until roughly August 1. After appearances in Spain and New York, the gallery is now on its way to San Francisco.
Jason prints letterpress cards for each show (see below), this is the fourth show so far.
Book exhibitions Munich and Bristol
Work of mine is included in Library of Artistic Print on Demand, curated by Annette Gilbert. It is on view at Villa Stuck in Munich until September 15th. For more information, visit the museum’s website. A book about the Library of Artistic Print on Demand is forthcoming from Spector Books. More info about the whole project: https://www.apod.li/
Then this Friday the 28th is the opening of B for Book, curated by Sarah Bodman at Frankenstein Press in Bristol. It looks like a joyful eclectic mix of artist’s books. It also launches the weekend of BABE – Bristol Artist’s Book Event and runs through July 19. More information about the show here or in the press release.
The Invisible Book at the National Library plus postcard set news
The Invisible Book has been gathering attention lately, and my postcard set Highlights in the history of The Invisible Book was sold out. I can now announce a new print run has become available, on a new cardstock. The set of six cards in a bellyband is priced at €10 plus shipping and available in my webshop. Or order by email.
The National Library (Koninklijke Bibliotheek) of The Netherlands is currently presenting The Invisible Book as one of the five most remarkable books in their collection. You can find more information (in Dutch) here. On September 26 there will be an evening at the library where all five books are discussed by the curators, find info here.
As a source of discovering many conceptual artists’ books that I hadn’t yet heard of, plus rediscovering works I did know, Moritz Küng’s Blank. Raw. Illegible… Artists’ Books as Statements (1960-2022) (published by Walther Koenig on the occasion of the show I wrote about in my previous post) has been enjoyable. The Invisible Book is also presented in this, and gives one of the chapters its name. For those who read Dutch, there is a good review by Christophe Van Gerrewey in De Witte Raaf.
Blank. Raw. Illegible…
From May 14 to September 3, the Leopold-Hoesch-Museum in Düren shows Blank. Raw. Illegible… Artists’ Books as Statements (1960-2022). Expect a whopping total of 259 books in the show, most of which will be visible to the eye.
Curated by Moritz Küng, the exhibition explores how contemporary artists and artist collectives exploit and activate the conceptual potential of a blank sheet of paper or a book with empty pages for their artistic practice. Starting with an authoritative exploration by artist Herman de Vries of the designation of the color white, the exhibition opens up the diversity of artistic concepts in reflecting on emptiness, purity, and raw material in relation to the formal and functional criteria of books in 15 chapters, the headings of each of which are taken from one of their book titles.
The Invisible Book will be on view in the show, and gives one of the chapters its name. For more information, visit the museum’s website. A catalogue will be published by Walther König (ISBN: 978-3-7533-0463-2).
For those wishing to read up on The Invisible Book, there were recently some new discussions of it: by Gill Partington in the London Review of Books (Vol. 45 No. 4, February 2023), by Annette Gilbert in the quite essential Literature’s Elsewheres (MIT Press, 2022), and by Felipe Cussen in La oficina de la nada (Ediciones Siruela, 2022).
Also
The postcardset of The Invisible Book will be part of Inexistent Books VI, curated by Sveinn Fannar Jóhannsson and Jan Steinbach at Salong in Oslo, May 19 – June 4.
Visible, but also involving blank spaces, the book version of The Man of the Crowd is on view in a small exhibit on Edgar Allan Poe at Centre Céramique in Maastricht right now.
Exhibition at Tartu Art Museum
While I’m traveling through my garden and through books, sitting with birds looking at a glorious sky of fewer airplanes, my work somehow travels out, which at the moment feels quite miraculous. I hope you who read this are also doing well. This is a small update concerning the exhibition ‘Silver Girls. Retouched History of Photography’, in which my print series and artist book The Library will be on view. Curators Šelda Puķīte and Indrek Grigor have managed to put this exhibition about lost, damaged, neglected photographs/visual heritage on with only the slightest of delays. The focus is on a selection of works by ten early women photographers from Estonia and Latvia. These vernacular works are contrasted with the works of three contemporary European artists who contemplate the lost and the neglected in our visual history. More information about the show can be found here.
Works by early women photographers from Latvia and Estonia: Antonija Heniņa, Minna Kaktiņa, Lūcija Alutis-Kreicberga, Emīlija Mergupe, Marta Pļaviņa, Olga Dietze, Helene Fendt, Anna Kukk, Hilja Riet, Lydia Tarem.
Contemporary works by: Nanna Debois Buhl, Sami van Ingen, Elisabeth Tonnard.
Tartu Art Museum
Raekoja plats 18,
Tartu, 51004
Estonia
The exhibition runs from June 12 to September 27.
Unknown Photographer. A group of women from the Women Member’s Committee of the Latvian Photographic Society during the observation of the solar eclipse, 1914. From the collection of the Latvian Museum of Photography.
Exhibition Walt Whitman’s Words
Song of Myself will be on view in the exhibition ‘Walt Whitman’s Words: Inspiring Artists Today’ at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. The show was curated by Deirdre Lawrence and runs from October 3 to December 14.
More info to be found here on the site of the Center for Book Arts.
2019 is the 200th birthday year of Walt Whitman (1819-1892). In addition to his work as a poet, Whitman is also remembered as a book designer and printer, essayist and journalist. The Center for Book Arts is marking this bi-centennial by looking at how Whitman’s writings have influenced contemporary artists working in the book arts. ‘Walt Whitman’s Words: Inspiring Artists Today’ follows several themes Whitman focused on in his writings, providing the connective tissue that links these works together. Geography, history, identity and immigration are a few themes that emerge from the works of art on view. Whitman’s fascination with Ancient Egypt, photography as a branding tool, and his notion of the world as he imagined it are all evident in the art on view. These diverse objects range from books, drawings, photographs, sketches, broadsides and a scroll.
Artists include: Isabel Baraona, Sasha Chavchavadze, Allen Crawford, Marianne Dages, Brian Dettmer, Daphne Fitzpatrick, Evelyn Eller, Anne Gilman, Donald Glaister, Sam Gordon, Barbara Henry, Meg Hitchcock, Timothy Hull and Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Sam Ita, Stefan Killen, Richard Kostelanetz, Karen Kunc, Sophia Le Fraga, Angela Lorenz, Russell Maret, Barry McCallion, Mark McMurray, Susan Newmark, Ilse Schreiber-Noll, Brian Selznick, Clarissa Sligh, Peter Spagnuolo, Elisabeth Tonnard, Walt Whitman, Rutherford Witthus, Marilyn Zornado.
The Center for Book Arts
28 West 27th St, 3rd Flr
New York, NY 10001
The Plan at museum Villa Stuck
Here are some first installation photos of my presentation of The Plan in the exhibition Von Ferne. Bilder zur DDR (From Far Away. Images of the GDR) at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich. The show focuses on art projects that are concerned with the visual legacy, specifically when it comes to photographic images, of the GDR. More information is available here (in German). Thanks to Joachim Schmid for the images below.
Installation of The Plan. A copy of the Plan in wooden frame, 9 GDR folders containing further copies of the Plan, 24 photographs in vitrine, text in golden letters on wall.
Vitrine with 24 photographs.
Floor plan
I was asked to develop a concept for the floor plan of the show, relating it to my project. Visitors to the exhibition receive this floor plan when entering the museum, the blank side is stamped then and there. When using the plan, visitors automatically take on poses analogous to the ones shown in The Plan.
Floor plan.
A visitor with the floor plan.
Further study of the floor plan.
Catalogue
The catalogue for the show was published by Walther König Verlag. It is bilingual in German and English and gives a good overview of the wealth of work in the show through artist’s contributions and several essays. Editors: Michael Buhrs and Sabine Schmid.
Exhibition in Munich
An installation version of The Plan will be on view in the exhibition Von Ferne. Bilder zur DDR which opens on June 5 at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich. The show focuses on art projects that are concerned with the visual legacy, specifically when it comes to photographic images, of the GDR.
More information is available here (in German).
The show is curated by Sabine Schmid. Works by Tina Bara, Sven Johne, Jens Klein, Jürgen Kuttner, Christian Lange, Emanuel Mathias, Katrin Mayer, Simon Menner, Einar Schleef, Christine Schlegel, Joachim Schmid, Erasmus Schröter, Maya Schweizer, Seiichi Furuya, Gabriele Stötzer, Paul Alexander Stolle, Tamami Iinuma, Elisabeth Tonnard, Andreas Trogisch, Joerg Waehner and Ulrich Wüst.
The exhibition runs from June 6 to September 15. The opening is on June 5 at 7 PM. There will be a catalogue published by Walther König Verlag (ISBN 978-3-96098-619-5).
Museum Villa Stuck
Prinzregentenstraße 60
D-81675 München
Elisabeth Tonnard 