Featuring the work of : Edicionces Caja Verde (Santiago de Chile), The Invisible Arts Club (Gateshead, U.K.), Payshay Fraysko (Genoa, Italy), and Single Room Occupancy (Vancouver, Canada)

Triple Candie is pleased to present “Costume Jewelry that Scratches the Skin,” an exhibition of recent work by four international contemporary “art” publishers. Based in Canada, Chile, England, and Italy, the publishers distinguish themselves from others around the world by producing editions and multiples in inexpensive, unsigned, limitless quantitites. Their works are, in short, the costume jewelry of the art publishing world.

The publishers are a diverse bunch. One creates unlimited fabric multiples for distribution in department stores. Another designs posters for an anarchist community center. A third is run by a young artists’ collective out of a flophouse kitchen, and the fourth is, well, a little hard to describe briefly. The exhibition provies a sampling of their work in the form of posters, digital photographs, books, stickers, printed coasters, small sculptures, knickknacks, ephemera, and other objects (except jewelry—there is no jewelry). What saves these objects from becoming commodities pure and simple must be addressed on a case-by-case basis: Some of the pieces masquerade in the language of art, others are hand-made, a few are so obtuse as to be almost nonsensical. And all are at least partly marketed to an art audience by being exhibited in an art context (be it a gallery, museum, or art fair).

If there is anything vexing about these publishers, it is their fixation on authorless production. All are quick to deflect the issue when asked, noting that they are “publishers,” “editors,” or “directors” and that many others are involved in creative decision-making. When asked about the motivations behind working the way they do, the same three words come up repeatedly: “expedient,” liberating,” and “cost-efficient.”

A Note about the Exhibition: “Costume Jewelry that Scratches the Skin” is the latest in a long series of exhibitions at Triple Candie about art but devoid of art. The publishers are fictional, and almost all of the editions and multiples in the show were sourced, altered, or designed by Triple Candie. The few real editions that have been included are unattributed. They include multiples by Allora & Calzadilla and Jonathan Lethem.

In the Case Space

An Exhibition that Will Tell You Nothing About Ryan Gander

Triple Candie is please to present an exhibition based loosely on Accenture? (Tenative Title), a 2009 work by Ryan Gander that was originally exhibited at gbAgency in Paris. The show coincides with the opening of two commissions for the Public Art Fund and the Solomon Guggenheim Museum.

Concurrent with this Exhibition: Ryan Gander, The Happy Prince, a public art commission on view at Doris C. Freedman Plaza at the Southeast corner of Central Park, September 15, 2010 – April 10, 2011. Intervals: Ryan Gander, Solomon Guggenheim Museum, October 1, 2010 – January 9, 2011.

Ryan Gander (London). Born in 1976 in Chester, United Kingdom, Ryan Gander received his BA from Manchester Metropolitan University, United Kingdom (1999) and has undertaken graduate studies at Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht (2000) and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2002), both in The Netherlands. Recent solo exhibitions include G-Tokyo 2010, Mori Art Center Gallery, Tokyo, collaboration with Aurelien Froment, Los Angeles (2010); As it presents itself—Somewhere vague, Art Unlimited, Basel (2010); It’s a right Heath Robinson affair (A stuttering exhibition in two parts), gbAgency and Kadist, Paris (2009); and Heralded as the New Black, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, United Kingdom, and South London Gallery, London (2008-9). Group exhibitions include Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside and Out, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2010); Manifesta 8, Mercia, Spain (2010); Chasing Napoleon, Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2009); Space at Medium, Miami Art Museum (2009), The Malady of Writing, MACBA, Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (2009); Younger than Jesus, New Museum, New York (2009); and Wouldn’t It be Nice, Somerset House, London, and Museum fur Gestaltung, Zurich (2008), and Centre d’Art Contemporarin, Geneva (2007). He is also the recent recipient of the Zurich Art Prize. Ryan Gander lives and works in London.

A Note about the Exhibition: This exhibition does not include art by Ryan Gander, nor was he involved in its realization.