A monograph on the work of Jiří Kovanda, on which Markéta Stará writes about the book’s production: “(Kovanda’s) aim to dissolve the line between art and life brings him to manipulate familiar objects from the outside world and incorporate them into works that, outside of the gallery context (and sometimes even within it), could easily be overlooked. This near invisibility resonates with Kovanda’s efforts to escape artistic trends and avoid any reductive framing. Although it could be argued that his oeuvre hovers on the border between kitsch and high aesthetics, his goal is to test the possibility of their equivalence and thus to deconstruct the distinction between art objects and utilitarian objects. It is exactly this endeavor that brought Kovanda to use the occasion of the publication of a catalogue to transform the book into an art object and make it the subject of his latest exhibition.”

A monograph on the work of Jiří Kovanda, on which Markéta Stará writes about the book’s production: “(Kovanda’s) aim to dissolve the line between art and life brings him to manipulate familiar objects from the outside world and incorporate them into works that, outside of the gallery context (and sometimes even within it), could easily be overlooked. This near invisibility resonates with Kovanda’s efforts to escape artistic trends and avoid any reductive framing. Although it could be argued that his oeuvre hovers on the border between kitsch and high aesthetics, his goal is to test the possibility of their equivalence and thus to deconstruct the distinction between art objects and utilitarian objects. It is exactly this endeavor that brought Kovanda to use the occasion of the publication of a catalogue to transform the book into an art object and make it the subject of his latest exhibition.”

A monograph on the work of Jiří Kovanda, on which Markéta Stará writes about the book’s production: “(Kovanda’s) aim to dissolve the line between art and life brings him to manipulate familiar objects from the outside world and incorporate them into works that, outside of the gallery context (and sometimes even within it), could easily be overlooked. This near invisibility resonates with Kovanda’s efforts to escape artistic trends and avoid any reductive framing. Although it could be argued that his oeuvre hovers on the border between kitsch and high aesthetics, his goal is to test the possibility of their equivalence and thus to deconstruct the distinction between art objects and utilitarian objects. It is exactly this endeavor that brought Kovanda to use the occasion of the publication of a catalogue to transform the book into an art object and make it the subject of his latest exhibition.”

For decades, Maurizio Nannucci has preserved exhibition invitation cards. The collection comprises both invitations and announcements from artists whose approaches to art are close to his own. Yet many also come from wider circles of artist friends, colleagues, galleries, and museums, allowing a chronology of relationships and information exchanges to emerge. The selection in this volume makes visible how this kind of communication – often conceived by the artists themselves – superimposes the purely informative value of the printed matter with the freedom of artistic expression; evidence of a holistic practice where such cards can become artworks in their own right.

This publication is an unedited reprint of the catalogue originally published by de Appel in 1980 as a follow-up to the international art manifestation Works and Words. The event sought to break with the one-way traffic of Western artists traveling to the East by inviting artists from Eastern Bloc countries to Amsterdam. The invited artists, theoreticians, film-makers, and art historians represented a broad spectrum of practices, theoretical approaches, and developments. Including artists such as; KwieKulik (Zofia Kulik and Przemysłav Kwiek), Július Koller, Jiří Kovanda, Dóra Maurer, Sanja Iveković and Dalibor Martinis, Mladen Stilinovic, Jozef Robakowski amongst others.

You can find more information on the exhibition here.

Produced on the occasion of the biennal The Lulennial, organized by Fabiola Iza and Chris Sharp at Lulu, Mexico City, a 9-square meter independent space in Mexico City, whose economy, “in the sense of doing a lot with a little or sometimes nothing at all,” is one of the founding principles.

With Zarouhie Abdalian, Francis Alÿs, Paola de Anda, Carl Andre, Billy Apple, Darren Bader, Pierre Bal-Blanc, Robert Barry, Graciela Carnevale, Ulises Carrión, Lygia Clark, Isaac Contreras, Marie Cool Fabio Balducci, Tania Pérez Córdova, Eduardo Costa, Christopher D’Arcangelo, Marcel Duchamp, Koji Enokura, Lucio Fontana, Fernanda Gomes, Alberto Greco, Simon Gabriel Greenberg, Matt Hinkley, Hi Red Center, Tehching Hsieh, Douglas Huebler, Stephen Kaltenbach, Yves Klein, Joseph Kosuth, Jirí Kovanda, Sol LeWitt, Lee Lozano, Jenine Marsh, Cildo Meireles, Robert Morris, Roman Ondák, Yoko Ono, Gabriel Orozco, Chantal Peñalosa, Goran Petercol, Kirsten Pieroth, Wilfredo Prieto, Ana Roldán, Lotty Rosenfeld, Karin Sander, Ana Santos, Martín Soto Climent, Mladen Stilinovic, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Isidoro Valcárcel Medina, Goran Trbuljak, Lawrence Weiner, B. Wurtz, Lin Yilin, La Monte Young.