Pals (full title: Pals for Life / Life for Pals) is a teleplay about the dialectics of friendships under the strain of artistic endeavor. Shot principally in January 2011 at the Actual Size gallery in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, the approx. 34-minute video — told from the point of view of a traditional studio audience television program — revels in the angst and emotion of 4 friends/lovers who must install their respective art works in the presence of frenemies large and small. Each Pal is named after a specific human being, though the story implies that these pals are simple archetypes from a vast universe of narcissistic micro-movements.

PALS — “They came for the fame and stayed for the spectacles.”
Opening January 15, 2011
Actual Size
741 New High St
Los Angeles CA 90012

Anna Sew Hoy, Magic Number Rattle Rock
Ceramic sculpture, glazed stoneware, dimensions variable
Edition limited, each unique
Published by Anna Sew Hoy

$400.00 · buy here

Anna Sew Hoy has produced a limited edition of ceramic sculptures entitled Magic Number Rattle Rock; unique objects at 400 dollars each to support her forthcoming artists book project. Each rattle has its own set magic numbers, with an object embedded in each sculpture which makes a very special noise. Purchase a sculpture above to support, or contribute to the project here at different tiers: limited edition poster signed by the artist and designer ($25); signed copy of the book + signed poster ($100); limited edition sculpture + signed book + signed poster ($500); personal thank you in the book + limited edition sculpture + signed book + signed poster ($800).

Anna Sew Hoy
Magic Number Rattle Rock
Ceramic sculpture
Dimensions variable
Each unique

Printed Matter is pleased to host a book launch and signing for Four Over One by Phil Chang.

Saturday, May 15, 2010
5:00pm-7:00pm
Printed Matter
195 Tenth Ave
New York, NY 10011

In Four Over One, the Los Angeles based artist Phil Chang employs the format of an artists book to explore ideas of economy and obsolescence. In collaboration with designer Jonathan Maghen, Four Over One is structured around Chang’s interest in how new outcomes arise from an antagonism between perceived and actual forms of value. The photographs that appear in the book were created using expired photographic materials exposed by an archival book scanner. Through a sparse display of color, black and white, and half-tone photographs, in conjunction with a restrained typographic treatment, Four Over One employs an economy of scale in order to consider the roles of abstraction, methods of art production, and modes of distribution in our contemporary culture.

Published by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department , in association with Textfield, Inc.

Distributed by RAM Publications

Miss Read invites a number of international publishers and artists to present their artist books at KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin. An artist book is always an opportunity for an artist to create a very personal and direct artistic form. Artist books also represent the forefront of contemporary innovative publishing, addressing questions of presentation and circulation, and new distribution strategies. Together with KW and the Berlin publishers argobooks and Michalis Pichler, Miss Read has invited around 30 international publishers and independent projects to the first event of this kind in Berlin, which aims to highlight the diversity and innovation in contemporary publishing. Miss Read has organized an accompanying program of lectures and presentations with artists, publishers, and graphic designers. On Saturday, September 5, from 3 to 9 pm and on Sunday, September 6, from 3 to 7 pm there will be discussions every hour with Stuart Bailey (Dexter Sinister, New York), Antonia Hirsch (Fillip, Vancouver), Christoph Keller, Jonathan Monk, Stephan (Pronto) Müller, and others. The full list of participants will be posted at www.kw-berlin.de.

Project management at KW Institute for Contemporary Art: Anke Schleper
Tel.: ++49. 030. 24 34 59.93 - Fax: ++49. 030. 24 34 59.99 - Email: as@kw-berlin.de

In early September there are two further events on artistic publishing:
On September 3, 2009, at 7 pm the exhibition KIOSK – Modes of Multiplication will open in the Art Library Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. KIOSK is a travelling and continually expanding archive on the status of independent publishing in the field of contemporary art since the 1990s. This project was founded by Christoph Keller in 2001 and has been hosted by more than 20 international institutions – including KW in 2005. In 2007 the archive was purchased by the Art Library. www.kunstbibliothek-berlin.de

On September 5, 2009, the magazine store Motto will be staging the event UNTER DEM MOTTO. One Day Self Publishing Fair from noon to midnight. Nieves books, Rollo Pressand Motto have brought together 40 independent publishers who will present their publications at Motto and in the neighboring Chert Galerie. www.mottodistribution.com

The Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer And Sale Agreement (1971)
Seth Siegelaub

Introduction to the Agreement made by Siegelaub in Leonardo, vol. 6, 1973.

1. The Agreement
The three-page Agreement on the following pages has been drafted by Bob Projansky, a New York lawyer, after my extensive discussions and correspondence with over 500 artists, dealers, collectors, museum people, critics and others involved in the day-to-day workings of the international art world.

The Agreement has been designed to remedy some generally acknowledged inequities in the art world, particularly artists’ lack of control over the use of their work and participation in its economics after they no longer own it.

The Agreement form has been written with special awareness of the current ordinary practices and economic realities of the art world particularly its private, cash and informal nature, with careful regard for the interests and motives of all concerned.
It is expected to be the standard form for all transfer and sale of all contemporary art and has been made as fair, simple and useful as possible. It can be used either as presented here or slightly altered to fit your specific situation. If you have questions as regards any part of the agreement, you should consult your attorney.

2. Enforcement
First, let us put this question in perspective: most people will honor the Agreement because most people honor agreements. Those few people who will try to cheat you are likely to be the same kinds who will give you a hard time about signing the Agreement in the first place. Later owners will be more likely to try to cheat you than the first owner, with whom you or your dealer have had some face-to-face contact but there are strong reasons why both first and future owners should fulfill the contract’s terms.

What happens if owner No. 2 sells your work to owner No. 3 and does not send you the transfer form? (He is not sending you the money, either.) Nothing happens. (You do not know about it yet.)

Sooner or later you do find out about it because it takes a lot of effort to conceal such sales and the ‘grapevine’ will get the news to you (or your dealer) anyway. To conceal the sale, owner No. 3 has to conceal the work and he is not going to hide a good and valuable work just to save a little money. And if he ever wants to sell it, repair it, appraise it or authenticate it, he MUST come to you (or your dealer). When you do find out about such a transaction-and you will-you sue owner No. 2, who will owe you 15% of the increase based on the price to owner No. 3 or on the value at the time you find out about it, which may be higher. Clearly, a seller (in this case No. 2) would be extremely foolish to take this chance, to risk having to pay a lot of money, just to save a little money.

As to falsifying values reported to the artist, there will be as much pressure from the new owner to put a falsely high value as from the old owner to put in a low value. There are real difficulties inherent in getting two people to lie in unison, especially if it only benefits one of them-the seller. In 95% of the cases the amount of money to be paid to the artist will not be enough to compel the collectors to lie to you.

You will note that in the event you have to sue to enforce any of your rights under the Agreement, article 19 gives you the right to recover reasonable attorney’s fees in addition to whatever else you may be entitled to.

3. Summation
We realize that this Agreement is essentially unprecedented in the art world and that it just may cause a little rumbling and trembling; on the other hand, the ills it remedies are universally acknowledged to exist and no other practical way has ever been devised to cure them.

Whether or not, you, the artist, use it, is of course up to you; what we have given you is a legal tool that you can use yourself to establish ongoing rights when you transfer your work. This is a substitute for what has existed before-nothing.

We have done this for no recompense, for just the pleasure and challenge of the problem, feeling that should there ever be a questions about artists’ rights in reference to their art, the artist is more right than anyone else.

-Seth Siegelaub, 1973.

The Agreements and the corresponding statement appear courtesy of The Siegelaub Collection & Archives at the Stichting Egress Foundation, Amsterdam.

Can’t Rape the Willing

2 May — 14 June 2009

In 1973, Ana Mendieta invited unsuspecting visitors to her apartment. Without having been warned, they witnessed a horrific (albeit confusing) scene: Mendieta was bent over and tied to a table with her underwear at her ankles, blood stains on her legs and broken dishes all over the floor. Protesting the recent attacks against women that were occurring on campus at the University of Iowa, Mendieta’s performance Rape Piece is a poignant reminder that the distinctions between private and public, inside and outside, remain somewhat unclear.

Using this performance as a point of departure, the group exhibition Can’t Rape the Willing not only poses some of the same questions that Mendieta considered but, more deliberately, it diverts by exposing what happens behind closed doors between consenting adults. By challenging rampant taboos about sexual fantasies, intimacy and deviant behavior, the artists in the exhibition are invited to delve into unrestrained—and unapologetic—perverse territory.

Theo Adams
Arlen Austin
Andres Bedoya
Cara Benedetto
Michael Bilsborough
Brendan Carney
Azul Ceballos
Tara DeLong
Chloe Dzubilo
Juan Pablo Echeverri
Kathryn Garcia
Danielle Levitt
Richard Lidinsky
Megan Lindeman
Lovett/Codagnone
Quinn Luke
Hector Madera Gonzalez
Nadja Verena Marcin
Elizabeth Neel
Marc Robinson
Julika Rudelius
Georgia Sagri
Dean Sameshima
Michael Sharkey
Dena Yago

For more information, contact Sarvia Jasso or Kathryn Garcia. After May 2nd, open by appointment only.

Based in Los Angeles, White is Associate Professor at the University of Southern California Roski School of Fine Arts, where he is also director of the MFA program.

White’s work has been exhibited internationally in museums such as the Center of Contemporary Art of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain; ZKM Museum für Neue Kunst, Karlsruhe, Germany; Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, China; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Oberösterreichisches Landesumuseum, Linz, Austria; Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne, Australia; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; and ICA Philadelphia, PA. Most recently White was included in Art in America NOW, organized by the Guggenheim and presented at the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art. White’s work was included in “The Puppet Show” at the ICA Philadelphia and “The Old Weird America” at Houston Contemporary Art Museum, and is included in “Nine Lives: Visionary Artists in Los Angeles,” curated by Ali Subotnik, now on view at the Hammer Museum in March 2009.

American Minor was edited by Christoph Doswald and Dorothea Strauss and published by JRP/Ringier. The publication is hardcover and 144 pages with 80 color images. It retails for $65 and can be purchased at Printed Matter’s storefront or at www.printedmatter.org. The first 50 books purchased through Printed Matter will come with a limited edition poster signed by the artist from his forthcoming exhibition at the Oslo Kunstforening, Spilling Hot Gossip a selection from The Girl Studies.

via Printed Matter

In Other Words…‘ is the first in a series of self published booklets conceived and designed by OK-RM. The booklet comprises of 7 new sentences exercising 16 of these new words and senses. For each word there is a definition and a brief history of its origins. An abbreviated history of the OED is included to contextualise the project. All content was written in collaboration with recent Goldsmith’s graduates Marianne Mulvey and Adeena Mey. Printed in a numbered edition of 500.

In Other Words… is distributed in North America by Textfield or contact your local bookshop.

“The Global Game has published a nice story about Municipal de Fútbol (”Where Angelenos do not fear to tread“). There you will also find a podcast interview with Jennifer Doyle by John Turnbull. The post includes extra research he put into the article — especially his inclusion of a link to this June 2008 story in the LA Times about a team of Guatemalen women playing in MacArthur Park. He points out that the spot where those women play is the location for the opening scenes of Goal. We should also remember that this is where the LAPD attacked people participating in an immigrants rights march and rally in May, 2007 (see LAPD tries to crush immigrant rights movement).”

suddenly was born of German urban planner Thomas Sieverts’s observation that “the shaping of the landscape where we live can no longer be achieved by the traditional resources of town planning, urban design, and architecture. New ways must be explored, which are as yet unclear.”

In response to Sieverts’s observation, the exhibition—which is global in its scope and reach–seeks to imagine the possibilities of spaces and experiences that have an indigenous history (the parking lot, for instance), but that exist beyond historical definitions of city and countryside, and conventional material cycles of development and disuse. Through a myriad of representations, texts, and activities that offer far reaching symbolic and strategic alternatives to capitalism’s functionalist agendas, the artists and writers in this expansive global project are re-imagining the landscape where we live now as an independent identity to be reshaped in the hands and minds of its occupants.

suddenly includes a range of projects and media such as painting, photography, and video, and also includes community-based activities such as communal dinners, spontaneous public lectures, and a city-wide poster initiative. The exhibition will evolve as it tours the world through 2012.

The Pomona College Museum of Art iteration of suddenly includes the following artists: photographer Marc Joseph Berg, New York; photographer Zoe Crosher, Los Angeles; filmmaker Michael Damm, Oakland; painter Molly Dilworth, Brooklyn; architect, landscape designer, and social practice artist Fritz Haeg, Los Angeles; sculptor and glass artist Elias Hansen, Tacoma; social practice artist Michael Hebb, Seattle; sculptor and photographer Frank Heath, Brooklyn; conceptual artists Hadley+Maxwell, Berlin; new media artist Michael McManus, Portland; social practice artist Mike Merrill, Portland; the collective Mostlandian Citizens Lady O and Junior Ambassador, Portland; photographer Shawn Records, Portland; painter Storm Tharp, Portland; and sculptor and author Oscar Tuazon, Paris.

suddenly comprises a set of exhibitions curated by Stephanie Snyder, director of the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery at Reed College, Portland, Oregon, with an annotated reader edited by author Matthew Stadler, and a series of public events that attempt to re-imagine cityscapes with contemporary art, literature, and the conversations they spark. For more extensive project information, including event listings, audio recordings, and to order project publications, visit: www.suddenly.org.

Laetitia Benat
Mark Borthwick
Takashi Homma
Henry Roy

Centre Culturel Suisse de Paris
18:00–21:00
Tuesday 10 March 2009
32-38, rue des Francs-Bourgeois 75003 Paris

Unique Gift Ideas
Plant Fruit Trees in Someone’s Name
Be a part of “A Growing Solution”!

Ingrid Chu & Slavs and Tatars
Rebuilding the Pantheon

The following interview coincides with the Pantheon of Broken Men and Women, a special poster insert by Slavs and Tatars produced for Fillip 8. The interview took place over e-mail after a preliminary conversation in January 2008 during their exhibition A Thirteenth Month Against Time (23 January to 1 March 2008) at the Newman Popiashvili Gallery, New York.

Slavs and Tatars titles are available through Textfield Distribution or contact your local bookshop.

MOCA
Pacific Design Center
8687 Melrose Ave
West Hollywood CA 90069

Thanks Michael