Alden Projects™
presents at NADA Miami Beach 2013 Off the Wall: a re-valuation of 60s,
70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s Pop and Post-Pop works which dispense with the
conventions of the gallery wall as a universal and timeless support in favor of
ephemerally insistent, fugitive, transient, or contradictory works which transport
art...off the wall. Needless to say, approaches and intentions vary. Works
include: a sheet of perforated stamps by Robert Watts (1963); a screenprinted
Christmas card by Robert Indiana—the original, first printing of Love
(1965), commissioned by MoMA, and preceding all Love to follow; a
stamped post card by On Kawara announcing the time he got up in 1968 (1968); screenprinted
wallpaper by Roy Lichtenstein (1968) rescued after being removed from the wall
of a collector’s home; photographic images of Bronx wallpaper in a unique book by
Gordon Matta-Clark (1973); a unique, grey-painted monochrome executed in a cardboard
box, slyly distributed (like a wolf in sheep’s clothing) as an editioned
“catalogue” by Gerhard Richter (1974); a drawing of a soup can in a
philosophical book by Andy Warhol (1975); a chalk drawing of a UFO by Keith
Haring removed from the 42nd Street subway walls (1982); a drawing of
a space shuttle on a mailed envelope by Tom Sachs (1997); an “angry girl” drawing
in a catalogue by Yoshitomo Nara (2004-10). All of these works once did (or
still do?) either—or both—of the following: 1) occupy the walls of everyday
life (and were thus “off the wall”), or 2) remove and eschew the vertical
support of the wall altogether in favor of surprising destinations: a mailbox, a
book, a catalogue. Gerhard Richter's painted monochrome (1974) exhibited here in Off
the Wall was sprayed in “original grey” anti-rust paint by the artist co-terminously
with other grey monochromes that he otherwise hung on a German museum’s walls
in 1974-75. What was the difference between the (unique) grey monochromes that
occupied a museum wall and the (unique) “original grey” spray-painted
monochromes occupying the space of a museum’s editioned catalogue? What is the difference today? (Alden Projects™ proposes that Gerhard Richter knows the answer...)
What does it mean
for Alden Projects™ to reorient these “off the wall” Pop and Post-Pop works on to
the temporary support walls of a Miami art fair?
Todd Alden says: “To
be involved with art, (to paraphrase Marcel Broodthaers), is to move from art
fair to art fair.”
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