Season Zero
Feb. 1 – March 25, 2018
Opening Reception: Thursday, Feb. 1, 6-8 p.m.
This is Season Zero.
How well do you behave? IN THE FLAT FIELD. brings together printed matter and promotional materials — first encounters — of and into various fields. From art school gallery exhibition posters to radical literature, from fashion runway invitations to a philosopher’s notes. With an ethos of slow programming, these materials gathered together will be installed accumulatively throughout the season. Things will come and go and stay for different durations.
How can aesthetic, political, and intellectual urgency be conveyed and designed in the present moment? We look at —and look back at — these materials not as artifacts but as media-screens of first encounters in that very first flat field. How well do we behave towards materials? How well do materials behave back? What resonances and resistance are there for the here and now? And finally, what responsibilities does a gallery situated in an art and design school, such as Beeler Gallery, have in the present moment?
This is not an exhibition.
Curated by Jo-ey Tang, and co-organized with Ian Ruffino and Marla Roddy.
SEASON ZERO: Conversation Six
Sable Elyse Smith
Friday, Mar. 23, 2018
6:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
A talk by New York-based artist Sable Elyse Smith, whose practice calls attention to confining structures in society and the often invisible ways in which they shape our minds or direct our bodies, focusing on quotidian violence in the institution of language and the carceral system.
Sable Elyse Smith, Landscape I, 2017.
S/S 2013 - S/S 2018
Eckhaus Latta & Eric Wrenn
On view in the galleries, March 6 – March 25, 2018
Formed in 2011, New York and Los Angeles-based fashion designer duo Eckhaus Latta (Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta) and their gender-fluid label has been included in exhibitions such as Greater New York, MOMA/PS1 (2015) and Made in L.A., Hammer Museum (2016). They work closely with graphic designer Eric Wrenn, who designs the label’s runaway invitations from Spring/Summer 2013 to Spring/Summer 2018. Eric Wrenn is the design director of Artforum and a designer of artists’ books, including Anicka Yi, Bernadette Corporation, Bjarne Melgaard, Seth Price and Wade Guyton as well as for clients such as Helmut Lang, Vejas and Mission Chinese Food.
SEASON ZERO: Conversation Five
Dushko Petrovich
Saturday, March 3, 2018
3:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
Dushko Petrovich, artist and co-founder of arts journal Paper Monument, will speak about his art publishing projects and his upcoming project at Beeler, The Daily Gentrifier Flyover Flyer edition, to be launched in Fall 2018. A double-sided broadsheet edition of The Daily Gentrifier, that explores the “crafty, organic, and hyper-local” ethical and aesthetic positions of gentrification of the American coasts, was previously launched at the New York Art Book Fair and LA Art Book Fair. Petrovich is Program Director, New Arts Journalism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
The Daily Gentrifier
SEASON ZERO: Conversation Four
Les Levine
Thursday, March 1, 2018
6:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
Conceptual artist Les Levine (founder of art tabloid Culture Hero, on view in the galleries) will speak with Sarah Robayo Sheridan (Curator at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto) about his work that spans five decades. Known for his heterogeneous output, including vacuum-formed acrylic pod in the 1960s, videos in the 1970s, and billboards in the 1980s and 1990s, Levine has long incorporated documentation, interviews and encounters with other artists in his video works, actively engaging in the mythic realities of artists’ roles in society.
Les Levine, Culture Hero Masterprint: Jill Johnston Exposed, 1970
Jill Johnston Exposed
Culture Hero Masterprint
On view in the galleries, Feb. 28 – March 25, 2018.
A special 1970 issue of the short-lived art tabloid Culture Hero, subtitled “A Fanzine of Stars of the Super World,” published by artist Les Levine from 1969-1971, printed in 28 rainbow-rolled lithographs and bounded in corrugated cardboard with 3 screws fasteners, was dedicated to Jill Johnston. As The Village Voice critic from 1959 to 1970s, Johnston wrote on Judson Dance Theater, Fluxus happenings, and the countercultural Downtown New York art scene. She later published the book “Lesbian Nation: The Feminist Solution” in 1973. In a role reversal, Culture Hero issue #3 features writings on Johnston by the composer Meredith Monk, the choreographer Yvonne Rainer, artists James Lee Byars, Andy Warhol, and “Vitamin G”, a regular gossip column by poet John Giorno. (Culture Hero Masterprint – Jill Johnston Exposed is in the Columbus College of Art & Design Packard Library Rare Books Collection )
Les Levine, Culture Hero Masterprint: Jill Johnston Exposed, 1970
SEASON ZERO: Event
An Art Book Affair
Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018, noon – 5 p.m.
Sunday, Feb. 25, 2018, noon – 4 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
Beeler Gallery presents An Art Book Affair, Columbus’ first art book fair.
Featuring art books by local and international publishers and the participation of three international art book fairs, including the Detroit Art Book Fair, Copenhagen’s art book fair One Thousand Books, Mexico City’s Index Art Book Fair.
Index Art Book Fair (Mexico City); No Place Gallery (Columbus)
Black & Red Books + Detroit Printing Co-op
On view in the galleries, Feb. 24 – March 25, 2018
Black & Red Books and the Detroit Printing Co-Op were founded by Fredy Perlman and Lorraine Perlman. Black & Red Books (founded in 1968 in Kalamazoo, Michigan) published the first unauthorized English edition of Guy Debord’s iconic 1967 book The Society of the Spectacle in 1970. Detroit Printing Co-Op (operated from 1969 to 1980) printed pamphlets, fliers, posters and books in Southwest Detroit, including the influential leftist journal Radical America from 1970-1972 and The Political Thought of James Forman, published by members of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Not trained as a designer, Fredy Perlman’s designs arose out of a sense of political urgency and necessity, with its experimentation in overprinting, collage techniques and paper stock.
Curated by graphic designer Danielle Aubert, Associate Professor of Graphic Design at Wayne State University, Detroit. Based on a previous exhibition co-organized with Maia Asshaq at 9338 Campau, Hamtramck in 2016.
Detroit Printing Co-op union bug; Archive of Black & Red Books
SEASON ZERO: Conversation Three
Neil Goldberg
Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018
6:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
Neil Goldberg, known for his video, photo, and performance work about embodiment, sensing, mortality, and the everyday, speaks at Beeler Gallery following a Feb. 21 performance at Idea Foundry, co-presented by Wexner Center for the Arts and CCAD Graduate Studies.
Neil Goldberg
L'Amour est plus froid que la mort
Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann
On view in the galleries, Feb. 15 – March 25, 2018
Beeler Gallery initiates a series of amenities-based projects in the galleries conceived by artists. Paris-based artist Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann envisions L’Amour est plus froid que la mort VII, VIII (Love is colder than death), functional and movable seating spaces that moved around the galleries during Season Zero for multiple purposes, for reading, listening, thinking, hanging out, zoning off and various Beeler Gallery events and encounters.
Laëtitia Badaut Haussmann, L'Amour est plus froid que la mort VII, VIII (Love is colder than death), 2018
SEASON ZERO: Listening Event
Listening To: Pop Resistance
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2018
6:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
Robert Loss, Assistant Professor at Columbus College of Art & Design, leads a listening event on Afrofuturism and pop music since 2000, based on his new book Nothing Has Been Done Before (Bloomsbury). In talking about the music of Janelle Monáe, Loss writes “Monáe’s commitment to her cyborg persona not only shows how any performer struggles with the pressure to construct a simplified self, it also makes us ask more questions, questions that might lead to the expansion of what identity means in the first place.”
With special guest: Sharon Udoh of Counterfeit Madison.
Listening To: Pop Resistance
Sharon Udoh of Counterfeit Madison & Robert Loss
SEASON ZERO: Wager of Word
Tuesday, Feb. 6, 2018
6:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public.
Writer and thinker Jennifer Teets conceives an evening on fictocritique, materialisms and tone, in a conversation with Michaël Van den Abeele (artist and co-founder of Établissement d’en face, Brussels), writer Dodie Bellamy, and curator Gean Moreno (Curator of Programs, ICA Miami).
Michaël Van den Abeele
Posters & Invitation Cards from Art & Design Schools
On view in the galleries, Feb. 1 – March 25, 2018
Micro-histories of art and design schools through their archive of exhibition posters, postcards, and promotional printed matter: Portikus, Städelschule (Frankfurt, Germany), Villa Arson (Nice, France), ÉCAL – École cantonale d’art de Lausanne, Cranbrook Academy of Art (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan).
Portikus, exhibition posters, 1988-2015
Katherine McCoy, The Graduate Program in Design, 1989, Cranbrook Academy of Art
ÉCAL
Your Shell Is In The Unending
Chris Domenick & Em Rooney
On view in the galleries, Feb. 1 – Mar. 25, 2018
Beeler Gallery initiates a series of amenities-based projects in the gallery conceived by artists.
Chris Dominick and Em Rooney construct Your Shell Is In The Unending, a flexible coat rack in the gallery to anticipate the cold season in Columbus. After Season Zero, the coat rack will be adapted in a new version for next winter in 2019.
Free Artists’ Publications
Available in the galleries, Feb. 1 – March 25, 2018.
Architectural maquettes of Beeler Gallery built by Zane Miller containing free artist-made publications are replenished throughout the season. They range from an archive of an art publications of artists’ writings focusing on aesthetic and social issues such as M/E/A/N/I/N/G (Susan Bee and Mira Schor) to single issues dedicated to an artist Black Pages (Christoph Meier, Ute Muller, Nick Oberthaler), a Beeler exclusive broadsheet by fierce pussy (Transmission III), and the archive of Amy Sillman‘s zine series O.G. Other contributions include Turpentine (Jean-Luc Blanc, Mimosa Echard, Jonathan Martin), Yu Ji, Gina Osterloh, Xavier Antin, Pierre Paulin, Tyler Coburn and Byron Peters’ Resonator, Ann Hamilton, Virginia Overton / Wade Guyton, as well as protest posters from Château de Montsoreau celebrating the 500th year anniversary of Martin Luther (by Louise Hervé & Chloé Maillet, Antonia Birnbaum, Fabrice Hergott, Antoine Dufeu, A Constructed World, and Art & Language), and Lara Ögel.
Maquette built by Zane Miller. On the maquette: Xavier Antin
Schema Corridor
Alain Badiou
On view in the galleries, Feb. 1 – March 25, 2018.
French philosopher Alain Badiou’s lecture notes on love, which formed the basis for his book In Praise of Love (2012, with Nicolas Troung), are installed in Schema Corridor, inform Season Zero’s moving image programming of Beeler Gallery.
Videos by graphic designer duo Vier5 (of Documenta14, Athens), artist Les Levine, filmmaker Ephraim Asili, and artist Sable Elyse Smith, will be screened on rotation during selected weekends. For more info and schedule, see Moving Image.
Alain Badiou, lecture note, nondated.
Alain Badiou, lecture note, nondated.
SEASON ZERO
Moving Image
Feb. 1 – Mar. 25, 2018
Free and open to the public.
French philosopher Alain Badiou’s handwritten lecture notes and diagrams on love, which formed the basis for his book In Praise of Love (2012), are installed in Schema Corridor, informing Season Zero’s moving image programming at Beeler Gallery.
Videos by graphic designer duo Vier5 (of Documenta 14, Athens), artist Les Levine, filmmaker Ephraim Asili, and artist Sable Elyse Smith, screened on rotation during selected weekends in the galleries.