by Whitney Kimball on September 19, 2015
I’ve been to enough book fairs and then subsequently packed had to move apartments enough times that I wasn’t exactly holding onto my cash for dear life this year, as I have in past New York Art Book Fairs. No more 20 pound monographs for shows I’ve never seen, no more zines of doodles that didn’t make the artist website. I wouldn’t take a business card if I didn’t have to, I decided. I’m approaching my bookshelf with more criticality this year.
I think this probably happened to the book fair, too, or fellow New York customers, because it feels like there’s less crap this year, and the crap is at least not disguised as a book. With over 370 booksellers/antiquarians/artists/galleries/indy publishers, I’m probably projecting, but I swear there are less piles of overdesigned charts on newsprint and more T-shirts with doodles. Yay. This year I saw plenty of books which, if not for my apartment, I’d very much like to see added to my local art library, my friends’ bathrooms, communal workspaces, and dream mansion of the future. With bleeding eyes, here’s that selection…
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by Michael Anthony Farley on August 28, 2015
Ben Schumacher originally posted this tribute to Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Perfect Lovers on the blog shu and joe in 2009. The original Perfect Lovers was created in 1991, shortly after Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ partner Ross Laycock was diagnosed with AIDS, which ultimately claimed the lives of both men. The two readymade clocks ticked in unison, presumably until one or the other died. It was a powerful allegory for the limited time the artist knew he had left with Laycock.
Schumacher’s homage is also a readymade of sorts—the artist found a link for the above GIF of a clock face and inserted it twice into his page. His Perfect Lovers also come with an expiration date—the clocks will disappear when the original host eventually deletes the file. Here, though, we’ve archived the GIF on the Art F City servers, so it will be keep ticking for as long as we do.
And the legacy of Felix Gonzalez-Torres is as vital as ever. Tomorrow afternoon from 3:00 to 5:00, Visual AIDS is hosting the Last Address tribute walk, which will lead a group to various sites in Manhattan where artists who died in the AIDS epidemic lived their final years. The event kicks off with a screening of Ira Sachs’ short film Last Address at the SVA Theater and includes visits to the homes of Gonxalez-Torres, Vito Russo, Assotto Saint, Tseng Kwong Chi, Hugh Steers, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Chloe Dzubilo. More information is available here.
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