I just put up an installation of work at Eyebeam for Studio Visits. This is work I have been producing over the last 6 months. The work is primarily old found books cut with the laser cutter, as well as some laser cut drawings.

The central piece against the wall is “FDIC Insured” a collection of 130+ cast off investment books from the Strand dollar racks, engraved with the logos of all of the failed banks of the Great Recession.

Along the left side is a piece called “Before and After.” I wanted to call it “Before and After President Reagan Lost His Memory” but that seemed a little overdetermined. So I just write it here. It is books from an 1982 and 1992 World Book enscribed with things that were (Free Love, Analog, Prisoner of War) and things that are (HIV/AIDS, Digital, Enemy Combatant.)

Sprinkled throughout are altered reference books. I like taking Dictionaries and turning them into memorials. It is kind of like putting an ironic inscription on a tombstone…

Along the right side of the wall are laser cut drawings of security patterns from the inside of security envelopes.

Eyebeam is currently closed to the public, but if you would like to see this installation you have two options. Contact me (myfirstname@mylastname.com) to set up a time to meet, or come by the Eyebeam Open Studios, which will be October 23rd and 24th from 3-6PM.

Black Market Type and Print Shop

July 9 – August 14, 2009
Opening July 9, 6-8pm

This installation is guest curated by Joseph del Pesco. He has created font alphabets based on the handwriting of famous contemporary artists, which are available for use by visitors.

Image is from Black Market Type and Print Shop Installation

The Black Market Type & Print Shop starts with a collection of 30+ type-fonts extracted from the artwork of an international array of artists. Scanned and converted into working computer fonts, these letterforms are available for use by visitors to the exhibition via a free print shop.To take advantage of the free printing services visitors are obliged to use the types in at least part of their design. Through this process the visual language of contemporary art is subtly distributed beyond the gallery through street-level ephemera such as rock-show flyers and for-sale notices. Other material produced in previous iterations of the exhibition include personal letters, out-of-order signs, and ‘free kittens to a good home’ posters.

Utilizing the Black Market Type, a group of 15 artists have been invited to make a text-only poster, to be posted in the public area surrounding the gallery. These include a small line of text at the bottom that quietly points back to the gallery. In the gallery these posters serve to incite the imagination of the visitor, offering possible formats and outcomes for their own ideas to take shape in the print shop.

Artist types included in the project: John Baldessari, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Mel Bochner, R. Crumb, John Cage, Henry Darger, Julie Doucet, Jimmie Durham, Marcel Dzama, Tracey Emin, Howard Finster, General Idea, Thomas Hirschhorn, Chris Johanson, Jasper Johns, Ray Johnson, Mike Kelley, Margaret Kilgallen, Duane Michals, Chris Ofili, Laura Owens, Gary Panter, Raymond Pettibon, Adrian Piper, William Pope.L, Richard Prince, Ad Reinhardt, Dieter Roth, David Shrigley

And the artists making posters using the type:

Mike Arcega – SF
Anne Walsh – Berkeley
Gareth Spor – SF
Aurelien Froment – Paris/Dublin
Stanislao Di Giugno – Rome
Chris Sollars – SF
Dan Seiple – Berlin
Germaine Koh – Vancouver
Arnold Kemp – NY/SF
Jan Estep – Minneapolis
Marisa Olson – NY
Michael Mandiberg – NY
Amanda Ross Ho – LA
Matt Keegan – NY/SF
Lee Walton – North Carolina

Richard L. Nelson Gallery: Black Market Type and Print Shop.

“Black Market Type and Print Shop”
06.09.09

Author: Micah Malone

05.07.09-06.27.09 Feldman Gallery at the Pacific Northwest College of Art

Creating fonts can be a touchy subject, raising issues of intellectual property—touchier still when the fonts in question sample hand-drawn lettering from well-known works of art. However, for the exhibition “Black Market Type and Print Shop,” font generation becomes a clever game of connoisseurship. Curator Joseph del Pesco appropriated mostly handwritten texts from single pieces of art (or series of works) as source material for his exhibited typefaces, without seeking permission from the sampled artists.

Ironically, John Baldessari’s Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, 1966–68, was originally meant to look impersonal, and yet the font generated from his work is more identifiable than anything else on view. Recognizing Baldessari’s presence yields one of the most delightful moments in the exhibition. By extracting only the handwritten text from artworks, thus ignoring original semantic content and rhetorical nuances, del Pesco frees the text from its context, though it remains bound by the artists’ authorial presence. Fetishizing well-known lettering has vast implications, including the potential for mischievous profits; yet here, it mostly just generates delicious fun, allowing viewers to match each artist with his or her font.

In a separate gallery—the so-called Print Shop—a computer awaits, loaded with the fonts in Adobe Illustrator. Visitors can design and print posters with their favorite “black market” font and are encouraged to add their creation to a forest of prints accumulating on a bulletin board in the same room. Amusing as it is to simply click the font menu and choose between Margaret Kilgallen, Duane Michaels, R. Crumb, and twenty-seven others, the results illustrate the font variety without ever spawning an inventiveness that surpasses novelty. This remains true in the first gallery, where, alongside del Pesco’s typefaces, text-only posters created from these fonts by participating “international artists” lack anything more than droll punning—making the implications of the exhibition’s font usage frustratingly safe.

“black market type and print shop” – artforum.com / archive.

Drawing Contemporaries at Eyebeam

Drawing Contemporaries, curated by Eyebeam senior fellow Michael Mandiberg, is an exhibition of work on paper made by a peer group of new media artists who all create drawings, both as a primary object and as an experimental process. The exhibition includes work from Darren Kraft, Steve Lambert & Julia Schwadron, Michael Mandiberg, Marisa Olson, and Lee Walton. For many of the artists, the use of computers and algorithms are the focus in their work. While a number of the artists are Eyebeam affiliated, all are contemporaries whose influences upon each other can be traced in this exhibition.

Darren Kraft uses powdered graphite to photorealistically reproduce icons and logos associated with consumer and political culture; Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert and Julia Schwadron write personal and poetic messages of hope which they leave taped up in public places; Michael Mandiberg uses the laser cutter to etch and carve works on paper that incorporate text, history and design; Marisa Olson performs Google image searches for obsolete technologies, and traces their contours directly off her laptop screen with a mechanical pencil; and Lee Walton creates elaborate indexes of possible graphic marks which are algorithmically used to document events as they occur. His subjects range from from pedestrian traffic to sports games.

Drawing Contemporaries was on view through June 9, 2009

Opening reception: Thurs., May 21, 6PM – 8PM

Drawing Contemporaries, curated by Eyebeam senior fellow Michael Mandiberg, is an exhibition of works on paper made by a peer group of new media artists who all make drawings, either as a primary object, or as an experimental step in their process. The artists often use computers or algorithms as a logic structure or drawing aid in a way that is foregrounded in these works. Many of these artists are Eyebeam affiliated, but all are contemporaries whose influences upon each other can be traced in this exhibition.

Darren Kraft uses powdered graphite to photorealistically reproduce icons and logos associated with consumer and political culture; Eyebeam senior fellow Steve Lambert and Julia Schwadron write personal and poetic messages of hope which they leave taped up in public places; Michael Mandiberg uses the laser cutter to etch and carve works on paper that incorporate text, history and design; Marisa Olson performs Google image searches for obsolete technologies, and traces their contours directly off her laptop screen with a mechanical pencil; and Lee Walton creates elaborate indexes of possible graphic marks which are algorithmically used to document events as they occur. His subjects range from from pedestrian traffic to sports games.

Drawing Contemporaries will remain on view through June 9, 2009