emple Gallery, Tyler School of Art, Temple University, announces the opening of Volume Attempts: The Space of Books, an exhibition of and about books, organized by the graphic designer Purtill Family Business. The exhibition runs from June 7 through October 25, 2008 (Please note that the gallery will be closed July 20 through August 31 for summer break).

Purtill Family Business, a graphic design studio nationally known for specializing in publications for artists, galleries and museums, and for working closely with artists, has designed a series of encounters that allow a slow exploration of publications. The exhibition moves beyond the usual categories of books related to art—art books, artist’s books, or books about art—and instead provides an environment in which each exhibited book—and all the books—can be considered.

In a provocative parallel to their highly collaborative practice, the exhibition presents Purtill Family Business’s own ideas alongside invited participants whose work demonstrates an inspired relationship with and to publishing. Among the components of the show are photographic projects that look at the spaces and images of books, a “diaporama” event by French artist Pierre Leguillon; a “Collective Investigation” event by Minnesota-based artist Matt Bakkom; the complete catalogue of Onestar Press (an artist book publisher); and publications selected by Bettina Funcke (curator and editor), Matthew Marks (art dealer), Christoph Keller (art publisher), and William Pym (writer). Featured will be an excerpt from “Double Spreads,” an exhibition of photographs of double-page spreads taken by graphic designers (organized by Christoph Keller and Jérome Saint-Loubert Bié). In addition to the publications on display, a bookmark and two artist’s books by Zoe Strauss and Heidi Giannotti will be published and distributed for free.

Temple Gallery
June 7 – October 25, 2008
259 N. 3rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19027
Hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 11 – 6 PM
More infos here

Cattelan
Concept and editing: Maurizio Cattelan
Essay: Bice Curiger
English translation: Catherine Schelbert
Published February 2008

Format: 325 x 430 mm. 12,7 x 16,9 inches.
Forty-three loose pages in a printed cardboard box.
First edition of 1000 copies.

his publication conceived by Maurizio Cattelan is both a book and an artwork. Like Duchamp’s “Boîte-en-valise,” it is a survey of Cattelan’s work. The artist designed the loose pages to fit in a carboard box; the hand-illustrated text and images emphasize the character of an artist’s book. Bice Curiger, chief editor of “Parkett” and curator at Kunsthaus Zurich, has contributed a well-informed essay.

To order this book or check the press’s other projects please visit www.threestarbooks.com

NE PAGE BOOK took 7 years and 35 seconds to make: 7 years to think about it, and 35 seconds to put it on paper (onestar press invited R. Barry to publish a book, in its collection of books by artists, in 2000). It consists of the single word “ENOUGH” on a single page, plus a lot of blank pages. But because this is Robert Barry’s book, it is naturally a vehicle for investigating his obsession with space and time. First of all, what about all those blank pages? Does the word “enough’ echo invisibly on them? Does the word have a spectrum of tones? Paternally irritated? Royally surfeited? Biblically severe? Objectively neutral? Or is it toneless? Or both? Or does “enough” work like a conceptual radio carrier wave transmitter, silencing everything else on its frequency (Barry set up a transmitter in a gallery in the early 70s to silence all other radio waves within its reach)? Is this book conceptually infinite? Do we need to own it to appreciate it? Does its “signal” diminish the farther we get from it? Is this book really a sculpture? Is it a kind of minimal architecture model? Is it a conceptual koan? Can I use it as a notebook? And so on…
Robert Barry has always been of a man of a few, well chosen words – could it be that ONE PAGE BOOK is his last (and first and only) word? It’s hard to improve on perfection. But is enough really enough?
Richard Dailey (Paris)

Robert Barry
One page book
Published December 2007

ear artists, collectors and friends of onestar press - we are pleased to announce that the MoMA, New York, has purchased the entire onestar press collection. The museum bought our Lawrence Weiner bookself, “EMPOWERMENT CANNOT BE TRANSLATED AS ENTITLEMENT,” which contains every artist book published by onestar press since its beginning 7 years ago. So a hearty welcome to the MoMA to each and every artist, as well as our thanks for your collaboration. After all, what’s an artists press without artists? If you have not taken a look at our web site (www.onestarpress.com) recently, we invite you to take this occasion to do so and catch up on our recent activites.

Christophe Boutin
Mélanie Scarciglia

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Interview with Christophe Boutin by Louise Forrester for MA research paper ‘Independent Art Publishing’, Goldsmith College

Louise Forrester: Publishing through onestar press offers the artist freedom and flexibility within an established publishing format. What other factors do you consider attract artists to OSP rather than self-publishing or approaching a traditional publisher?

Christophe Boutin: The main reasons artists come to us are the network we have been developing, and our skills in preparing and producing books. We provide a network of people and ideas – when an artist produces a book within this collection, he immediately makes connections, meets other artists and talks to his peers about the collection, and about ways of developing the project formally or intellectually - even if they don’t meet physically they meet through ideas. Also, because the book is presented as part of a collection, we offer a new form of visibility whether the artist is well-known or less-known.
The book holds a fascination for the artist. I’m always fighting against the idea that a book is an instrument of power - it should be considered a specific space to develop the project, an idea that hasn’t changed since we started.

Louise Forrester: onestar press is notable for its prolific output – over 120 books in five years. Has giving the artist total control over the layout facilitated this rapid production?

Christophe Boutin: In fact now it’s more like 150 (without counting the Hors Collection projects- see the “more” section of our website). The artist has to have control over the layout. This is very important to us, as it’s an artist’s project in the form of a book. Let’s compare this to an installation: when an artist makes an installation, he wants to control the process and we give him the tools to make it. I insist that the artist takes charge of every stage of the prepress.

Louise Forrester: Have you ever had a situation where the work of an artist compromised onestar press?

Christophe Boutin: Personally I have no problem with all this. The books are strictly un-edited by the publisher, the artist is absolutely free to do what he wants. However, if it’s a hate book, we won’t publish it. That is the only limitation we impose. We have never had a problem of that type though.

Louise Forrester: The motto “strictly un-edited by the publisher” inverts the traditional relationship between publisher and artist, could you say something about this?

Christophe Boutin: Some artists don’t understand the process and submit proposals, which we will not look at. When invited, the artist is free to develop his/her project, which we will send to print without interference or judgment. Some artists are very much afraid of the process, some are very happy with it – most can’t believe it. We try to minimise dialogue between ourselves and the artist concerning the development of his/her book project, to avoid our taste interfering. My only objective is to develop this collection of books, to make it as large and eclectic as possible. Artists fight not only through forms but through ideology, ideas and philosophy – we try to open different ideas within the collection.

Louise Forrester: Each artist becomes an editor by suggesting future artists for onestar press to publish - does this introduce a risk of the series becoming elitist, a closed group of artists connected by social networks?

Christophe Boutin: Yes, it’s a very slippery slope. One example I could give you is of Miltos Manetas, who recommended quite a few artists to us - maybe 10 or 15 artists in our collection. Eventually we had to say “Ok, stop, we can’t only play with your friends”.
It’s also very difficult to answer uninvited proposals. I don’t want to act as a censor, but I have to protect the economy of the project. I could accept everything that came in, but that would be a different project. We try to encourage the artist to get a recommendation, this way they enter a conversation about their work and the collection. We’ve established enough networks now that it’s easy enough for an artist to get a recommendation and then come back to us. Of course, then we will go ahead with the project.

Louise Forrester: The fixed parameters (80 gram bulky paper, a glossy colour cover, black & white interior, perfect bound, 140 x 225 mm format) for each publication were developed from your self-published book, do you feel they have translated successfully for other artists? Have artists ever challenged these parameters?

Christophe Boutin: The parameters for that first book were imposed by the machine it was printed on, they’re simply the cheapest way of producing a book on this specific machine. Later this format became our ‘trademark’. Yoko Ono, for example, was about to send her project, when suddenly she decided she wanted it printed in colour. We told her she had to work within the same parameters as everyone else, to play the same game. In the end, she self-published the book, and thanked onestar press on the colophon page. onestar press is still waiting for Yoko Ono to send a project in black and white that we will happy to publish.

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