Since 2001, I have structured my work as if it were a book of paintings with evolving chapters: the story unfolds via the exhibition situations, the past work, the paintings themselves, and the viewer’s place before them. The size of these chapters can range in size from one painting to however many I choose. The paintings—all either a golden ratio or a square—must always be one of six sizes priced accordingly.
These four pages are an outline of an underlying structure showing chapter titles, dimensions, and prices. The op patterns function as background noise to scramble legibility. I developed them as drawings with San Francisco–based graphic designer Geoff Kaplan, who designed my book Allegorical Decoys. Currently, we are working on an upcoming publication and used this project to begin a visual discussion about it.
—R. H. Quaytman
A few years ago I began producing one-off publications that I registered officially with the International Standard Book Number agency. After a while I started to receive letters from the Legal Deposit department at the British Library asking me why I had not sent copies of my books, as required by law.
A few years ago I began producing one-off publications that I registered officially with the International Standard Book Number agency. After a while I started to receive letters from the Legal Deposit department at the British Library asking me why I had not sent copies of my books, as required by law.
We generally expect our artists to be more interesting people than those from other walks of life, and we reward them for their special abilities to help the rest of us find complexity of meaning, beauty and even grandeur in the world around us.
Originally published in
Featuring interviews with Allen Ruppersberg and Cheryl Donegan, Allora & Calzadilla, Joel Shapiro, Lydia Peelle, Rebecca Solnit, Cherien Dabis, Karole Armitage and Lukas Ligeti, and Thomas Bradshaw.
Work that is just about the technical or conceptual, personal or political, is fine; it meets the world with what’s in fashion. But there’s something else bordering on magic, that brings an artwork home, makes it land and resonate. You can’t really teach that so much as conjure it.
Kara Walker
