Design Damage

When this catalog (which I designed) was published in September of 2010 I dropped off a copy at the tiny cafe I go to every day (I also do their design). This is what it looks like now. Pristine version here.

Daily Book Graphics #265 / Systems

©1984 / Design: Bud Jacobs, Type set by Printing Prep Inc. (still in business, they print a lot of my photographs). This catalog was produced by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Info on Francois Morellet here.

Daily Book Graphics #87 / 1942-72

Catalog of works acquired by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery between 1942 and 1972. I don't think this cover entirely succeeds, the designer seems to be going after an Albers look, but can't quite fully commit.

Daily Book Graphics #5 / Color and Field

This is a catalogue for a group painting show at the Albright-Knox in 1970. I bought it at a house cleaning sale at the Gallery a couple years ago. As with most catalogues from the era, the interior pages are mostly black and white. I love the die-cut cover, I wish I had a less worn copy.

Design: David Battle, Vie Design, Yellow Springs, Ohio

Art Fair Tokyo 2008

Masashi, Yuka and I went to Art Fair Tokyo 2008 last Friday evening. I had wanted to check out contemporary art here, so it was good luck that this was happening during my visit. Compared to the European and American fairs, Tokyo is very small, local and conservative. Half of the work was from galleries that specialize in a sort of faux traditional Japanese style. There were some cool galleries there, and some interesting work, I would be interested to see how it develops over the next couple of years. In one of the book publisher's stalls we found a Japan-only postcard book of work from our home town gallery the Albright-Knox. Masashi (an 8 year B-lo resident) bought one.

Jennifer Steinkamp at the Albright-Knox

Last night we went to the opening of Jennifer Steinkamp's show at the Albright-Knox. None of the above images are actually from the exhibit, but they are the same or similar pieces. Before last night I was only familiar with her tree projections. The installation of the show is incredible, the Albright has a number of large high ceiling rooms (25 ft high I'm guessing), which are fully taken advantage of by the artist. In some rooms the projections go from the floor to ceiling and somehow project around the doors and windows. The visitors become part of the work as their shadows are cast on to the walls when they walk past the numerous projectors. This is most effective in the piece entitled Jimmy Carter, (see a smaller version above) which consists of four walls of undulating flowers. I am not sure how one is supposed to take the title of the piece, is it a joke about the ineffectiveness of his presidency or a sincere tribute to the man? It is hard to know which is worse. While I found the exhibit an inspiring demonstration of the potential of projections, I didn't really like the visual content of the pieces. Most of the forms have a 3-D metallic quality that I associate with the self consciously "digital" graphics and art of the late 90s (to be fair some of the pieces are from 1998). After going through the Steinkamp show we sat down in front of a Jeremy Blake dvd piece (it looked a bit like the wavy colors he used for the covers of Beck's Sea Change album) and I found myself wishing that I could see that piece filling an entire room.

Installing at the Albright-Knox Collectors Gallery

I have a show at the Albright-Knox Collectors Gallery that opens tomorrow night. I am showing work from the Stray Shopping Cart Project and the Insect Drawings series. Luckily I only had to do a tiny fraction of the installation myself (that is a professional pictured above). For the first time I am showing the insect paper cuts that are source material for my prints. I have been hesitant to show them in the past because I felt that they conflicted with the prints. For some reason I no longer feel that way. This feeling could be temporary. I will post images of the finished installation tomorrow.