Exhibition: Canceled: Alternative Manifestations and Productive Failures

David Horvitz, Rarely Seen Bas Jan Ader Film, film still, 2007. Courtesy of the artist and 2nd Cannons Publications.

April 18 – June 30, 2012

Opening: Wednesday, April 18th, 7:00-9:00pm

Center for Book Arts

28 West 27th Street, 3rd Floor

New York, NY 10001

Curated by Lauren van Haaften-Schick

This exhibition will present canceled or otherwise prohibited exhibitions that now exist as publications or in other formats. These publications document the process and politics of cancellation, exist as an alternative manifestation of the exhibit, act as a critique of the forces that called for its cancellation, or may be an admission and exposition of an ultimately productive failure. In the context of the Center for Book Arts, ‘Canceled’ highlights the book form as a crucial means of disseminating documentation and information on a wide and accessible scale, potentially in ways that are more historically stable, and more effective, than the original exhibition would have been. Through utilizing printed matter, these artists and curators have found alternative routes through which the politics surrounding the presentation and creation of art become at least as relevant as the work itself.

A full color catalogue will be produced in conjunction with the exhibition, with essays by Lauren van Haaften-Schick, and contributions by Guerrilla Girls and Sérgio Muñoz Sarmiento.

Canceled Exhibitions and Artist’s Projects:

Manifesta 6, Nicosia, 2006

Wallace Berman, Ferus Gallery, Los Angeles, 1957

Hans Haacke, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1971

-Guerrilla Girls, Billboard for the Public Art Fund, New York, 1989

-Jill Magid, Becoming Tarden, redacted manuscript, 2004 – 2008, confiscated from Authority to Remove, Tate Modern, London, 2009 – 2010

-David Wojnarowicz, A Fire in My Belly, censored from Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, 2010 – 2011

It’s Me, Beijing, 1998

Imaginary Coordinates, The Spertus Museum, Chicago, 2008

-Christoph Büchel, Training Ground for Democracy, Mass MoCA, North Adams,

Massachusetts, 2006

-Patrick Cariou, Yes Rasta, Celle Gallery, New York

-Richard Prince, Canal Zone, Gagosian Gallery, New York, 2008

-anonymous, exhibition unknown, 2001

Jo Baer, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1972

-Brendan Fowler, BARR tour, 2008

-Bas Jan Ader, In Search of the Miraculous, 1975

Publications, Works, and Documentation:

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