Saving Signs

June 29 – September 9, 2018

Rachel Foullon. THERE IS NO PLACE LIKE THIS PLACE ANYWHERE NEAR THIS PLACE SO THIS MUST BE THE PLACE, 2001.

Saving Signs is an exhibition of found and saved signs by artists, by children, and by non-artists selected from a personal collection of printed, hand-scribbled, and handmade notices. Each registers a singular moment in art or everyday life. In no particular order, these include: an early, 1966 screen printed sign announcing a previously unregistered appearance by Warhol with the Velvet Underground: this surprising, fan-made placard was nevertheless inscribed from Warhol to Sterling Morrison (who saved it); a 1934 anti-fascist sign by John Heartfield; a 1971 poster gleefully announcing the grand opening of Gordon Matta-Clark’s restaurant Food; a 1982 chalk drawing by Keith Haring removed from Times Square; a 1979 The Clash poster announcing 50p tickets for a Christmas Day concert in a tiny venue in Ladbroke Grove, sparsely attended, due to this last-minute announcement.

These ephemeral signs share the stage with insistent quotidian, non-art signs. Many are by children:  an anonymous Newport Vermont child’s chalk doodling on an erasable slate, circa 1905; (preserved, it sits next to Keith Haring’s chalk drawing); scrawled signs of apology; drawn signals of love; torn and threatening portents of anger; hard-to-read cries of anguish. Signs by adults include an ad hominem attack sign left on a parked car, but also an artist friend’s sign of joyful thanks written after a memorable dinner party.  A sign found in an actual museum reads: “The Gallery of Conscience is Closed”; a notice from Los Angeles implores: “Fix Your Accent”. A stenciled-and-spray painted cardboard placard in all-caps insists “SHE WON.” 

Picasso famously said: “All children are born artists, the problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” Saving Signs might be an allegory about the wisdom of commemorating this homily, and of paying attention to the ways we do—and don’t—hold onto specific signals.  What signs are urgent? What signs do we value?  What signs do we collect? What signs are worth saving?  

© Todd Alden 2018

Signs/works by: Anonymous, John Heartfield, Rachel Foullon, Anonymous, Keith Haring, Anonymous, Claes Oldenburg, Anonymous, Jenny Holzer, Tania Bagan, Barbara Kruger, Anonymous, Anonymous, Ian Cooper, Ruby Sky Stiler (with Daniel Gordon), Sara Greenberger-Rafferty, Randy Moore, Daniel Corrigan/The Replacements, Anonymous, Luciane, Roy Lichtenstein, Wallace Berman, Richard Sharpe Shaver, Anonymous, Anonymous, Moe, Anonymous, Gordon Matta-Clark et. al. (Food), Guy de Cointet, Mike, Anonymous/The Clash, Anonymous, Rick Moody, James Lee Byars, Olivia & Gabby, Keiso, and Jeff Gibson.

L.A. Air: Still Breathing? at Alden Projects™ (Mezzanine, Gallery U)

L.A. Air: Still Breathing?

Alden Projects™, a project-based enterprise from New York presents L.A. Air: Still Breathing?: a special installation at Printed Matter’s L.A. Book Fair from January 31st- February 3^rd at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA in downtown Los Angeles (Mezzanine, Gallery U). This project collects together signal Los Angeles-centric editions, artist’s ephemera, drawings, and important documentation from the city’s golden era of smog (1959-1973). In addition to a significant collection of rare Ferus and Irving Blum Gallery posters (e.g. Ed Ruscha, Robert Irwin, Craig Kaufman, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly, Roy Lichtenstein and many others), this project unpacks other early touchstones of Los Angeles’ luminous art and publicity apparatus including Claes Oldenburg’s first ever Mickey Mouse at Dwan Gallery (1963), John Baldessari’s palm trees, red balls, and blue skies (1973), and Bruce Nauman’s re-duplicative invocation of soot-filled skies in his monochrome-heavy publication, L.A. Air (1970).

No show about printed matter and Los Angeles air from the 1960s – early 1970s would be sufficiently perplexing without Ed Ruscha. In addition to a complete collection of Ruscha’s signed photographic books (1963-1978), this installation also includes a rare accordion-folded prospectus from the publicity apparatus of Ruscha’s own publishing enterprise--Heavy Industry Publications; it announces the serial gambit of the artist’s peculiar enterprise in addition to the books’ very small prices.  That was then.  This is now.

This presentation also features important ephemera for example, by John Altoon, Larry Bell, Chris Burden, John McCracken, and many others as well as John Baldessari’s early and important artist’s books.

Because Los Angeles air also flows north and south, this installation also features seminal California ephemera, including the only known, extant example of the poster of Wiliam T. Wiley’s legendary Slant Step show in Berkeley, 1966. Ranging to the south, L.A. Air: Still Breathing? also features a collection of rare photographic postcards by San Diego-based artist, Eleanor Antin from her 100 Boots series (1971-73). These ephemeral works defied the conventions of art’s support and distribution: they picture battalions of Viet Nam-era Army Navy surplus boots marching and luxuriating California mises-en-scenes and found their audience in mailboxes across America instead of in galleries and museums.

Finally—and putting the air into despair—this project ends with an out-of-time banner by Mike Kelley featuring an enlarged skull on a leprechaun-rasta back ground; it is a coda for the viewer to pause and to again breathe in the ephemeral character of a place and a time out of joint. Inevitably, the dark ink of these ephemeral registrations transforms in the clear light of today’s artistic air: all works for sale.   

Alden Projects™ installation can be found in the Mezzanine in Gallery U.

© Todd Alden 2013                                                        Enquire