ALDEN PROJECTS™: Yves Klein

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Paper Will Blow Through The Streets

Paper Will Blow Through the Streets—the subject of Alden Projects™’ booth at NADA New York 2014—focuses on signal works from the 1960s-90s for which ephemerality is both subject and object. Artists include: Eleanor Antin, Linda Benglas, Marcel Broodthaers, James Lee Byars, Marcel Duchamp, Öyvind Fahlström, General Idea, Robert Indiana, Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Sam Hsieh, Yves Klein, Barbara Kruger, Yoko Ono, Robert Rauschenberg, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Christopher Wool and more.

Paper Will Blow Through the Streets borrows its title from an early, furtive performance by James Lee Byars who printed the words “A WHITE PAPER WILL BLOW THROUGH THE STREETS” onto a large disc of Japanese paper, one example of which is also said to have been released onto the ancient streets of Kyoto in 1967. What remains of this ephemeral work are printed sheets of white paper commemorating the artist’s celebration of art in the floating world. Not conceived for display or sale in a gallery, these performance relics were distributed freely instead, neatly conflating the ephemeral subject and object in a nearly perfect articulation of art as an eternally ephemeral subject.

Most of the artists included in Paper Will Blow Through the Streets respond to the fugitive legacy of Marcel Duchamp who is represented. Highlights include the only print attributed to Warhol that is known to have been silkscreened by Warhol himself (1963); a complete, signed collection of the photographic books by Ed Ruscha (1963-78) accompanied by rarely seen ephemera; post-card works by Eleanor Antin (1971-73); a subway drawing and other works by Keith Haring; important street posters by Jenny Holzer (1979-82) and Barbara Kruger (ca. 1983), including an unpublished, variant by the latter.

Alden Projects™ Booth 204

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NADA NEW YORK 2014
Alden Projects™ Booth 204

Friday, May 9 - Sunday, May 11

Opening Preview:
Friday May 9: 10am - 2pm

Open to the Public:
Friday, May 9: 2pm - 7pm
Saturday, May 10: 11am - 7pm
Sunday, May 11: 11am - 5pm

Pier 36 at Basketball CIty

299 South Street on the East River

New York, NY 10002

Monochromes and Other Syllables

Alden Projects™ presents Monochromes and Other Syllables, a selection of advanced art of the 1960s and 1970s exploring seriality and contradiction in, and through the strategic deployment of monochromes including: Arman, Marcel Broodthaers, David Diao, Yves Klein, Robert Morris, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter, and Jenny Holzer. These diverse artists give color to the pivotal legacy of Klein, who transmitted his monochromatic systems beyond the unitary canvas and beyond the confines of the gallery to occupy work in the reproductive spaces of the publicity apparatus of art. All explore the monochrome as re-duplicative, non-essential, and even linguistic conundrums.

This booth begins with two unspeakably rare blue monochromes created by Yves Klein to announce his first German retrospective, Monochrome und Feuer in Krefeld, January 1961. Like his Timbre bleue (1957-59), these screenprints announce the surprising work of the artist arriving through the very publicity apparatus of art itself, putting fresh and sober frames around his provocative installation in the museum. Nearly all of Klein’s IKB-monochromed invitations were surrendered at the door of the 1961 vernissage (delayed due to a Belgian train strike) or otherwise thrown away. Still, contemporary audiences must have wondered: what is the difference between the monochromes hanging in the museum and the ones arriving as invitations by post?

Similarly, Gerhard Richter’s Graue Bilder (1974) consists of grey anti-rust paint on a cardboard box with printed materials cataloguing Richter’s exhibition of grey monochromatic paintings at the Städtisches Museum Mönchengladbach in 1974. This limited edition catalog box accompanied the latter exhibition with an “original grey” painting on its inner lid, constituting Ricther’s contribution. Possible meanings of this purposive act by Richter, perhaps, can be understood through the artist’s elucidation in 1976: “No one painting is meant to be more beautiful than, or even different from, any other. Nor is it meant to be like any other, but the same; the same, though each was painted individual and by itself…”.

No less contradictory is Pense Bête, a ground zero work by Richter’s friend, Marcel Broodthaers, who transformed his final book of poetry into one of his inaugural works of art. Pense Bête (the book of poetry) was transformed into Pense Bête (the work of art) by pasting geometric shapes cut out of children’s colored paper on top of selected portions of the printed text, some of which remains legible. What is the difference, Broodthaers asks, between the space of poetry and the space of plastic art? How does the act of reading differ in the plastic arts?

Finally, Jenny Holzer’s self-published Inflammatory Essays (1979-1982) consist programmatically of 100 words in 20 lines, each printed on a different sheet of colored paper. Originally intended to be wheat-pasted onto the walls of the street, contradiction unfolds from the startling, extreme content of the essays, but also in the shifting colors of their printed supports. Reframed here in the space of the Cologne Art Fair, Holzer’s posters may no longer escape the white cube or the commodity system the artist attempted to circumvent, but they do demonstrate, nonetheless, that a monochrome isn’t forever, and that every picture tells a story.

At Alden Projects™: ART COLOGNE Booth C-006.

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ART COLOGNE 2014
Alden Projects™ Booth C-006

Thursday, April 10 - Sunday, April 13

Open to the Public:
Thursday, April 10: Noon - 8pm
Friday, April 11: Noon - 8pm
Saturday, April 12: Noon - 8pm
Sunday, April 13: Noon - 6pm

Wednesday, April 9: AXA Art Professional Preview and Vernissage (By Invitation)

Koelnmesse GmbH
Messeplatz 1
Hall 11
50679 Cologne
GERMANY

NY Art Book Fair: RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER’S LIBRARY AT ALDEN PROJECTS™

RICHARD ARTSCHWAGER’S LIBRARY AT ALDEN PROJECTS™

Gallery O (First Floor) at the New York Art Book Fair, P.S. 1 MoMA, Queens from September 19^th – 22^nd, 2013.

Alden Projects™ exhibits a selection of rare and unique artist’s publications from the 1960s-70s from Library of the late Richard Artschwager (1923-2013). Highlights include Alden Projects™ discovery of a unique variant of Gordon Matta-Clark’s Walls paper (1973) (substantially different from the previously known version) together with Matta-Clark’s later Splitting (1974). Both Matta-Clark titles are affectionately dedicated to Richard Artschwager. During the 1970s, both artists shared an interest in the gaps between art and architecture and the association is rich. Other highlights here from Artschwager’s library include:

*Sol Lewitt’s first book printed (from the edition of 200; 1968).

*Sol Lewitt’s first poster (1968).

*Sol Lewitt’s Autobiography

*Robert Barry’s rare, Polish language artist’s publication for Galeria Foksal (Warsaw, 1973) with unique drawings in pencil by Artshwager of a light bulb and other conceptual esoterica on the front cover, presumably from ca. 1973.

*Joseph Beuys’ early artist’s publication/multiple incorporating painted felt (a.k.a. the Monchengladbach Box, 1967).

*Lucio Fontana’s leperello publication with punch-holed covers (1958).

*Richard Artschwager’s 1968 receipt from a Cologne artiquarian/bookstore registering the artist’s simultaneous purchase of both the Beuys Monchengladbach box together with the Fontana with punch-holed covers (both described above) on September 21, 1968. 45 years (to the day) later, both early editioned mutliples are on display again at the New York Art Book Fair!

*Donald Judd’s Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, Objects, and Wood-Blocks 1960-1974.

In addition to other special selections from Richard Artschwager’s Library, Alden Projects™ also presents other rare and important books, posters and documentation by or of: Marina Abromovic, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Marcel Broodthaers, Hans-Peter Feldmann, General Idea, Yves Klein, Ed Ruscha, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner and others.

Visit Alden Projects™ at the New York Art Book Fair on the First Floor (Gallery O).

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New York Art Book Fair

P.S. 1 MoMA, Queens

PREVIEW: Thursday, September 19, 6-9pm

Friday, September 20, 12–7 pm
Saturday, September 21, 11 am–9 pm
Sunday, September 22, 11 am–7 pm

Alden Projects™ presents "Who's Still Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?" : Booth 206

Alden Projects™ presents Who’s Still Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?, a special installation at NADA New York 2013 (Booth 206) of color-themed abstraction exploring the role of décor in art from around the time Barnett Newman created his 1966 painting, Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?. Juxtaposing American with European perspectives, this booth includes chromatic and reproductive abstractions by Marcel Broodthaers, Daniel Buren, Ellsworth Kelly, Yves Klein, Piero Manzoni, Nicholas Krushenick, Roy Lichtenstein, and Andy Warhol. From the modern vantage of a commercial art fair booth, Alden Projects™ attempts---one more time, with feeling---to raise the question anew about the relationship between abstraction and fear in the reproductive art of the 1960s.

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SPOTLIGHT: Yves Klein in 1957-1959

YVES KLEIN

Timbre bleu (Blue Stamp). 1957-59. IKB pigment on postage stamp. 0.98 in. x 0.79 in.

Klein originally created blue stamps to be sent through the mail (in the place of official postage stamps) to announce a double exhibition at Iris Clert and Colette Alendy in 1957. This is one of the unsent examples, thus retaining all of the “purity” of its IKB brilliance! This proposal, however modest in size, is a signal production in the history of both neo-avant-garde exhibition-making and of artist’s publicity. “In many ways, (Yves Klein’s) stamps conformed with the usual ones: they were small, regulation-sized rectangles with perforated edges,” writes Sidra Stitch. “Unlike official stamps, however, they were totally blue, imageless, and devoid of any signifying information. They were thus a telling reversal of the commemorative stamp that features a depiction of someone or something, as well as a contrast to the pragmatic prerequisites of philatelic design practiced by modern governments...in the most modern sense, they were also logos, instantaneous signs, advertisements, components of a spectacle.” Fine and with excellent provenance.