Stephen Perkins, Mining the Archive: Subspace Works and Artists' Accordion Books, Watrous Gallery, Madison, Feb. 10 - April 9, 2023

Back: Sophie Smallhorn, A Book of Postcards, Circle Press, London, 1999, ed. 1000 

Front: Richard Long, A Walk Past Standing Stones, Coracle Press for Anthony d'Offay, 1980

the installation begins

I'm having a one-person show at this cool downtown Madison art gallery. One half of the show consists of 5 exhibits I've curated for my home-based gallery Subspace, and re-installed here in the Watrous gallery, with two of them being shown for the first time. For more about Subspace see: subspace gallery

The other half of the gallery is taken up with an assortment of 29 artists' accordions, all of which I have reviewed in this blog. This exhibition was cancelled for a couple of years due to COVID, so I'm really happy to see it installed with an opening reception on Friday, Feb., 17, 6:30-8:00pm with a talk by me at 7:00pm. Thanks to the Watrous staff for such a smooth installation!

Girls, Girls, Girls: all woman show, Subspace, Madison, 2017/2023

Anne Perkins: Needlepoints (2019-2022), premiering at the Watrous Gallery, 2023 [works created during the COVID lockdown by my 97 year old mother]

examples of Anne Perkins' needlepoints

Bodyworks: artists working with the body, Subspace, 2018/2023

Ian Hamilton Finlay: Printworks from Wild Hawthorn Press, Subspace, 2020/2023

101 Artists' Postcards, premiering at the Watrous Gallery, 2023

Simon Cutts, pli selon pli, Coracle Press, Tipperary, Ireland, 2014, ed. 2

Top: Anish Kapoor, Sketchbook, Editions Dilecta, Paris, 2011

Bottom: Roy De Forest, A Journey To The Far Canine Range And the Unexplored Territory Beyond Terrier Pass, Bedford Arts, San Francisco, 1988

photo courtesy Watrous Gallery

Hartmut Andryczuk, Covukrain, Redfox Press, Blue Fox Collection, Achill Island, County Mayo, Ireland, 2022, ed. 70

Another cool silk-screened accordion in the Blue Fox accordion series from the folks at Redfoxpress. There are two other accordions by this German artist in this blog, and like this one they all display his own unique visual poetry that combines words and images, coupled with the dark and brooding quality of his drawings. This work combines a text about Covid with the war in Ukraine, see complete texts below.

10 pages double-sided, individually 6.25" x 3.75", and when fully opened 3ft 1.5"

"Science has found a way to inflate coronaviruses as big as tennis balls. Finally the military 

had the opportunity to bomb them in eastern europe (ukraine)"

"After the war the military and virologists saved all the remaining variants."

back

Maria Eichhorn, 72 Bilder (72 Pictures), supplement to catalogue 'Der zerbrochene Spieger: Positionen zur Malerei,' Museumquartier Messepalast, Vienna, 1993

This gatefold accordion catalogue was published as a supplement to the exhibition catalogue for Der zerbrochene Spiegel: Positionen zur Malerei (The Broken Mirror: Positions on Painting) co-curated by Kasper Konig and Hans-Ulrich Obrist and shown originally at the Museumquartier Messepalast, Vienna, 1993. 

These minimalist works were created during Eichhorn's 1992/93 exhibition Qui, Quoi, Ou, at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville Paris. A German artist known for her site-specific works, she represented Germany at the 2022 Venice Biennale. While a relatively traditional gatefold accordion publication, however, I particularly enjoy the pure visuality of all these differently colored paintings when the catalogue is unfolded.

On the reverse side is information about each individual work including date and the title/color of each work in 3 languages

6 double-sided pages, individually 8.25" x 5.75" and when fully opened 2ft 10.5".

back cover

Dorothy Iannone, Follow Me, DAAD, Berlin, 1978 [incl. 45 rpm record 'Follow Me', 1978]

front cover

A fascinating double-sided catalogue for Iannone's 1978 exhibition at the Haus am Lützowplatz gallery in Berlin where she was living & working after receiving a prestigious Berlin Artists-in-Residence fellowship from DAAD. 

While accordion exhibition catalogues have a long and distinguished history, this one departs from this tradition and moves closer to being an artists' book. Iannone would seem to confirm this when she thanks the editor Thomas Deecke for "... graciously permitting that the pain of making a catalogue be transformed into the pleasure of making a book." 

The catalogue contains a smorgasbord of Iannone's works including paintings, prints, sculptures as well as a 45rpm record, all of them created within her larger quest for what she called "ecstatic unity" through erotic love. One of the pinnacles in this quest was her meeting in 1967 with the Swiss artist Dieter Roth (1930-1998), and their intense 8 year relationship that followed. Her works during these years would revolve around the world they created between themselves with Iannone reflecting in a 2016 interview "...my work went into many new directions and took on many new forms. Because i was so much in love with him, Dieter was my muse..." 

I feel lucky to have found this accordion, as I'm only aware of one other that she published during her entire career. Iannone forged a totally unique painterly and illustrative style, that is soaked through with eroticism and sexuality, but it comes from a deep well of honesty about being a woman with erotic desires and living & interacting with the world of men. Ultimately, Iannone came to the realization that "ecstatic unity" could not be found through erotic love and that it had paradoxically led her "...to look for unity within myself."

Dorothy Iannone died almost a month ago on December 26th, 2022 in Berlin at the age of 89.

16 pages, double-side, individual pages 10" x 8", when opened 10ft 8 inches.

reverse side

45 rpm record in cover attached to the accordion

back cover

Josef Koudelka, Teatro del Tempo, (2003) and Decreazione, (2013)

accordion with slip cover

Powerful two-page accordion spreads display Koudelka's gritty photographs taken in Rome between 1999-2003.

56 single sided pages, individually 8.25" x 11.5", when fully opened 53ft 8"

accordion with slip cover

"The Holy See participates this year for the first time in la Biennale di Venezia with a pavilion inspired by Book of Genesis. For the second of the interlinked exhibition trio named Creazione, De-Creazione and Ri-Creazione, the Vatican approached the photographer Josef Koudelka. A 22-page folder with design by Aleš Najbrt accompanies the exhibition of nine large format panoramic photographs speaking about “the opposition of man to the world and to moral and natural laws, and material destruction deriving from the loss of ethical meaning.” [Aleš Najbrt website]

21 single sided pages, individually 8.75" x 11.5", and when fully opened 20ft 1".

Agence MYOP, Sine Die: March 16 - May 11, 2020, André Frère Éditions, Marseille, France, 2020

This is a powerful photographic book that evolved in response to the imposition of the Covid-19 lockdown in France in 2020. The accordion is made up of works by 19 photographers from the agence MYOP group, and was designed under the artistic direction of Pierre Hybre, Stephane Lagoutte and Jean Larive, accompanied with an introductory essay by Michel Poivert. The sine die of the title (meaning: without any future date indicated) only serves to emphasize our then collective nervousness about this dangerous new virus, and how long it would be with us.

I'll let the statement on the inside flap of this book introduce its theme and how these photographs came to be created during the first 56 days of the lockdown:

"Ever since the lockdown was announced in France on March 16, 2020, photographers of the agence MYOP have felt the need to document this historic 

event.

For the whole 56 day duration, highly sensitive to the impact of Covid-19 on our environments, we photographed the parts of the country where we were locked 

in and restrained. Every day, the pictures we shot were pasted on our Instagram account, putting together online of 465 images reproduced on the back of the Leporello.

From this corpus we have selected 56 pictures, one per day, creating a new chronology of this period where the horizon disappeared. Michel Poivert has drawn free inspiration from them to write a series of antilegnedes."

On the side of the accordion with the 56 photographs there is a real sense of dislocation, of people isolated and confined, and the outside with its empty streets and everyone trying to adjust to the new 'space' of the virus. The variety of images brush up against each other in their depictions of this new environment and together they create a poignant momento to those early days of the pandemic.

The reverse side of the book has small reproductions of all 465 images shot during the 56 day time period, as well as a listing documenting the credits for each photograph (photographer/title/location)

59 double-sided pages, individually 8.5' x 6.25" and when fully extended 31ft 11.5".

reverse side

back cover