During the 1960s, the relationship between contemporary art and printed matter underwent a radical shift.

As Pop Art, Fluxus, Happenings, and Minimalism emerged while intersecting with one another and eventually leading into Conceptual Art and other related movements, printed matter as a form of reproduction was reconsidered as a primary site for the presentation of “works.” It came to serve as a venue for inscribing linguistic information—such as performance instructions or concepts functioning as artworks—and as a medium for exploring new relationships with viewers, thereby revealing a wide range of potentialities. In tandem with these developments, the exhibition catalogue also rapidly intensified its experimental character: rather than functioning merely as a secondary medium of documentation, it began to be used as a primary “exhibition site” in its own right.

Lucy Lippard described this tendency as the “dematerialization” of art; yet paradoxically, printed language, photographs, diagrams—and perhaps even information and ideas themselves—come to confront us as problems marked by their own distinctive materiality. This exhibition sheds light on several facets of that very “matter,” presenting rare examples of artists’ books and catalogues, and reflecting on their unmined potential while attempting to identify possible points of connection to the present.

Includes artist books and publications by:
John Baldessari, Kunsthalle Bern, Mel Bochner, Ray Johnson, Allan Kaprow, Bruce Nauman, MOMA (NY), Brian O’Doherty, Claes Oldenberg, Adrian Piper, Seth Siegelaub, Lawrence Weiner, Emmett Williams, La Monte Young, and others.