From April 18 – May 2, 2010, PARTICIPANT INC is pleased to present That’s When the Rabbit Taught the Eagle a Lesson With a Smith & Wesson, an exhibition featuring an artists’ book of the same name. Both the publication and its presentation are organized by artist Jasper Sebastian Stürup, reflecting his ongoing practice of initiating and realizing projects in which he would like to be a part. Each of the participating artists works with drawing as their primary medium, and, while representing a wide range, they are all somehow united by a sense of intimacy that is an inherent a strength of drawing. As well, many have previously advanced the concept of the book as a medium. The exhibition emphasizes the artists’ book as an art object, and consists mainly of the book itself, displayed on tables with all pages viewable.

All of the works included were made especially for this publication, conceived as an artwork in itself. The book is 160 pages, 25 pages by each artist, printed in an edition of 500, and available for $40. The title, That’s When the Rabbit Taught the Eagle a Lesson With a Smith & Wesson, is a slightly reworked line from the song “Billy Jack,” from the album A Heavy Nite With… by Relaxed Muscle, a duo including Jarvis Cocker under the name Darren Spooner and Jason Buckle.

Jasper Sebastian Stürup lives/works New York) has made over thirty artists’ books through Fluens Forlag, a company founded while the artist was studying at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Art in 1994. Two of those books were collaborations with other artists. This is his first book in which Stürup invited several artists to take part in creating one book. Fluens Forlag will launch its own website in conjunction with this exhibition at www.fluensforlag.com

Barry McGee (lives/works in LA) has made several books, in which he integrates different types of photographs with his paintings, sculptures, and tags. Kristofer Hultenberg (lives/works in Copenhagen) has recently made I’m sure not, which consists of a series of precise abstract drawings. D-L Alvarez (lives/works in Berlin) and Mike Paré (lives/works in Albuquerque) work with narrative, but in very different ways. Alvarez’s neatly drawn laidback pixilated distorted images have an iconic feel to them. In Mike Paré’s drawings, skater youth culture meets a wide range of 70s style images, from concert images to the occult.

On the occasion of this artists’ book exhibition, That’s When the Rabbit Taught the Eagle a Lesson With a Smith & Wesson, PARTICIPANT INC will inaugurate a series of bookshelves devoted to nonprofit and artists’ publishing efforts, including Fluens Forlag, Regency Arts Press Ltd., Primary Information, and PARTICIPANT PRESS.

Regency Arts Press Ltd. is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to publishing artists’ books with contemporary artists. As a service for artists, Regency is primarily committed to fostering experimentation and innovation by providing them opportunities to work outside of the concerns and constraints of the commercial art marketplace. Regency also created innovative public programming exploring the intersections between art and books. regencyartspress.org

Primary Information is a non-profit organization devoted to printing artists’ books, artist writings, out of print publications and editions. Primary Information was founded by James Hoff and Miriam Katzeff, who met while working at Printed Matter, a non-profit artist bookstore in New York. United by their mutual interest in artist publications, they formed Primary Information to foster intergenerational dialogue as well as to aid in the creation of new publications and editions. primaryinformation.org

PARTICIPANT PRESS is the publishing enterprise of PARTICIPANT INC, a not-for-profit alternative art space founded in 2001 in New York. The primary focus of the press is to publish artist’s works of fiction.