Dispatches from No Soul For Sale

Dispatch

dispatch.jpg

Howie Chen and Gabrielle Giattino's Dispatch, from New York, are representing here with a project called RE: RE: 1975-1976 New York Art Yearbook, pictured above. All of the posters depict images sourced from the publication New York Art Yearbook. You can read a bit about the show below, from the Dispatch site. To read an interview between Dispatch and the original editor of the New York Art Yearbook, Judith Tannenbaum, go here.

New York Art Yearbook is the subject and source for the exhibition, RE: 1975-76 NEW YORK ART YEARBOOK. As an anomalous publication commissioned by a scientific reference book company, the volume meticulously covers all solo artist exhibitions that occurred from September 1975 to June 1976 in New York City, with illustrations and descriptive text.

The Yearbook provides a unique insight into the artistic production, art scene, and concerns in New York during the year of the U.S. Bicentennial. It captures abstract expressionism, pop art, color-field painting, minimalism and conceptual art at the crossroads. With the notion of pluralism surfacing, it reflected the diverse styles, subject matter, techniques, and aesthetic concepts at hand. All this against the backdrop of the continuing downtown migration of artists with commercial galleries and alternative spaces in its wake.

As a source for an iterative curatorial project, the contents of the Yearbook become generative material for discussion and exhibition. This includes a discursive look at current contemporary art production, the persistence of conceptual/formal tropes, and the expanding global commercial ‘downtown.’ With each iteration of the project, the Yearbook will function as both historical document and image bank for the continual production of new visual arrangements.