Joseph Grigely
12 Dec 2015 - 21 Feb 2016
Gregory Battcock en route to Leningrad on the Mikhail Lermontov, 1973.
Unknown photographer. The Gregory Battcock Archive.
Unknown photographer. The Gregory Battcock Archive.
The Members Library* presents
JOSEPH GRIGELY
The Gregory Battcock Archive, 2009–2015
12 December 2015 – 21 February 2016
Gregory Battcock (1937–1980, US) was a New York–based artist who gave up his practice as a painter to become an art critic; he wrote on Minimalism, Conceptual art, video art, and performance, and generally championed artists pushing the boundaries and definitions of contemporary art. In 1992, Joseph Grigely was exploring the recently abandoned facilities of a storage company in the same building as his studio when he found Battcock’s archive of manuscripts, photographs, and correspondence strewn throughout the space. After making copies of some of the material, he donated a bulk of the collection to the Archives of American Art. Grigely has researched and worked with the archive in various ways over the years. A publication entitled Oceans of Love: The Uncontainable Gregory Battcock, is the first book to present a selection of Gregory Battcock’s prefaces and essays (from Minimalism, Idea Art, Why Art?, and other books), as well as columns published in underground newspapers in the 1970s. The publication is co-published with Verlag Walther König, Printed Matter, New York and Kunstverein in Hamburg. The exhibition is co-produced with Kunstverein in Hamburg.
*The Members Library is constructed and designed by the artist Céline Condorelli (b. 1974, France) in collaboration with Harry Thaler as a permanent work entitled Things That Go Without Saying. The structure built for The Members Library is part of a series entitled Additionals. These different prop-like objects and quasi-functional structures operate at a scale between furniture and architecture.
JOSEPH GRIGELY
The Gregory Battcock Archive, 2009–2015
12 December 2015 – 21 February 2016
Gregory Battcock (1937–1980, US) was a New York–based artist who gave up his practice as a painter to become an art critic; he wrote on Minimalism, Conceptual art, video art, and performance, and generally championed artists pushing the boundaries and definitions of contemporary art. In 1992, Joseph Grigely was exploring the recently abandoned facilities of a storage company in the same building as his studio when he found Battcock’s archive of manuscripts, photographs, and correspondence strewn throughout the space. After making copies of some of the material, he donated a bulk of the collection to the Archives of American Art. Grigely has researched and worked with the archive in various ways over the years. A publication entitled Oceans of Love: The Uncontainable Gregory Battcock, is the first book to present a selection of Gregory Battcock’s prefaces and essays (from Minimalism, Idea Art, Why Art?, and other books), as well as columns published in underground newspapers in the 1970s. The publication is co-published with Verlag Walther König, Printed Matter, New York and Kunstverein in Hamburg. The exhibition is co-produced with Kunstverein in Hamburg.
*The Members Library is constructed and designed by the artist Céline Condorelli (b. 1974, France) in collaboration with Harry Thaler as a permanent work entitled Things That Go Without Saying. The structure built for The Members Library is part of a series entitled Additionals. These different prop-like objects and quasi-functional structures operate at a scale between furniture and architecture.