February 16, 2008 7-10 pm
INTRODUCING MATERIAL: TEXTS BY VISUAL ARTISTS
Please help us celebrate as we launch MATERIAL Issue One and the MATERIAL Limited Edition Series in Los Angeles.
WHAT WORDS FOR WHAT THEN? *
Inspired by publications such as Documents, ZG, and REALLIFE Magazine, MATERIAL emerges as a contemporary outlet for the artist’s voice.
Started by artists interested in the writings of other artists, MATERIAL supports visual artists with textual concerns. MATERIAL is not a thematically driven nor ‘on-topic’ publication, but rather an image-free, ad-free context for the materialization of artists’ ideas, divergent opinions, thoughts, and appropriations of language. Our sensibility is experimental and critical. We solicit friction and conviviality both.
The editorial board for MATERIAL is made up of artists who make writing a central part of their practice: Thomas Lawson, Olivier Richon, John Stezaker, Jonathan Miles, and Dorit Cypis.
Issue One features texts by international artists: Hirsch Perlman
Olivier Richon
Becky Beasley
Nicholas Grider Olivia Booth Marie Jager
Pete Kirby
Darren O’Donnell Katrina Palmer Charlotte Smith Andrea Büttner Roman Vasseur
NO THOUGHT EXISTS WITHOUT A SUSTAINING SUPPORT. **
Designed by 3n17 in Berlin, the journal encourages tactile handling; it is printed and folded for maximum utility on Alster Werkdruck paper, and opens in tri-fold. Printed in an edition of 1000, more or less biannually, MATERIAL will be available in Los Angeles at Bank Gallery, in London at Man Gallery and Laura Bartlett Gallery, in San Francisco at the Silverman Gallery, and the list is growing; check the website for more locations soon: www.materialpress.org.
INDEPENDENCE IS AN UNREALISTIC CONSTRUCT.
Independence is an unrealistic construct that relies on bravado and many forms of denial. We are all dependent in some way it is simply a matter of who or what one would like to become dependent on. MATERIAL would like to be dependent on writing and artworks and the people who love writing and artworks. MATERIAL aims to be self-funded by offering limited editions of visual work that engage the textual.
For our inaugural issue, we are offering a series of editions by nine international artists: Marie Jager, Becky Beasley, Nicholas Grider, Arthur Ou, Augusta Wood, Katie Lewis, David Raymond Conroy, Duncan Wooldridge and Jacob Melchi. The artists involved have all generously donated work to MATERIAL to fund its continued operations. We are offering these works much
below market value to encourage collectors to support the journal as an emerging space for experimentation.
These works are available for purchase at the launch parties at Man in London and Monte Vista in Los Angeles, and on our web site: www.materialpress.org.
For more information please contact Ginny Cook and Kim Schoen, founding editors, at info@ materialpress.org.
Material is supported in part by ART2102 of Los Angeles. Through 2008, ART2102’s program aims to collaborate with and support a number of emerging artist-run spaces and initiatives, in and beyond Los Angeles. For more information, visit www.art2102.org.
*Samuel Beckett, Worstword Ho, 1983
**Mel Bochner, epigraph to a preparatory sketch for his inscribed wall drawing Theory of Boundaries, 1969-70