MATERIAL 3

Ginny Cook and Kim Schoen, MATERIAL 3
Softcover, 96 pp. + insert, offset 2/1, 160 x 270 mm
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-0-9801441-2-3
Published by MATERIAL Press

$15.00 ·

MATERIAL exists as a platform for the artist’s voice. Each issue brings together a different group of artists who write, as well as a new collaboration with a graphic designer. During the production of this third issue, our designer Zak Jensen put forth the idea of concatenation — the act of linking together, or the state of being joined (It was caused by an improbable concatenation of circumstances) (there was a connection between eating that pickle and having that nightmare)(the joining of hands around the table).

Concatenation (c.1600, from L.L. concatenatus, pp. of concatenare “to link together,” from com- “together”+ catenare, from catena “a chain”) seemed an appropriate word for our editorial method. An unlikely assemblage of texts becomes connected through this process; uncanny linkages emerge. Wyeth appears twice. Performances interact. In this issue: voices that duel, voices that parrot, voices that hypothesize, translate, and meditate, voices that speak simultaneously. As Roland Barthes writes, we have assembled these textual events, as “pleasure in pieces; language in pieces; culture in pieces,” to build upon one another into something new.*

*Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1975), p. 51

CONTRIBUTORS
Farrah Karapetian, Paul Zelevansky, Renee Petropoulous, Nate Harrison, James Welling, Natalie Häusler, Harold Abramowitz, Shana Lutker Stephanie Taylor, Alice Könitz, Frank Chang, and Emily Mast.

Alice Konitz, Andrew Wyeth, Art, Catherine Guiral, Concatenare, Criticism, Daniel Lucas, Design, Distribution, Dorit Cypis, Emily Mast, Farrah Karapetian, Frank Chang, Ginny Cook, Harold Abramowitz, James Welling, John Stezaker, Jonathan Miles, Kim Schoen, MATERIAL Press, Natalie Häusler, Nate Harrison, Olivier Richon, Paul Zelevansky, Quentin Walesch, Renee Petropoulous, Richard Miller, Roland Barthes, Shana Lutker, Stephanie Taylor, Theory, Thomas Lawson, Typecraft Wood & Jones, Typography, Wendy Schoen, Zak Jensen

The Mexican Suitcase

Enrique Santos, The Mexican Suitcase
Softcover with flaps, 360 pp., offset 4/1, 200 x 240 x 32 mm
English and Spanish
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-607-7636-29-8
Published by Landucci

$45.00 ·

The Mexican Suitcase is the result of more than three years of work by the Mexican-based Argentinian artist, Enrique Santos. This artist book could be, amongst other things, a ‘catalogue’ of an apocryphal exhibition that is not meant to be, one that from its very beginning proposes a reverse path to that already established — first the book, and then? Ever since this basic wink (not to mention that the title itself is an appropriation) Enrique Santo’s work addresses the idea of “robbery”. Using diverse languages and tools (photography, collage, video, sculpture, film, installations) the artist reflects upon the contemporary artistic works in a sociocultural and political environment of violence in which we find ourselves immersed. Robbery as a metaphor of appropriation and “postproduction” — in Bourriaud’s definition of the word — as an element specific of an artistic way of producing, that is loaded with intertextuality, reference, discourse and images that roam our daily lives.

Santos’ work is a way of thinking about how contemporary art is produced, and at the same time it talks about the gaze, the interpretation of he/she who observes, the understanding and production that comes with every look. It reflects upon a single active spectator, who builds a discourse, appropriates all meanings and elaborates on them according to his life story, and his social, cultural and emotional capital. That gaze has a filter through which history is interpreted. It talks about and with the viewer without underestimating his capacity for understanding. From the very beginning, the book presents a relationship of shared complicity, discourse, codes and understandings, but demands a lucid and imaginative perspective.

Retaking film, journalistic, documentary and advertising language, Santos quotes and reinterprets the great thieves of the screen and some real criminals, in order to talk about lies, confusions, myths and misunderstandings, as well as an ever more violent and heartbreaking reality that crawls into our lives through trivialized and shallow images.

— Florencia Magaril