In 2002 the three gallerists Gavin Brown (New York), Franco Noero (Turin) and Toby Webster (The Modern Institute, Glasgow) opened a gallery in Rome. It was a common dream, which lasted for a few years. In 2015, Brown went back to Rome and opened a second gallery at Sant’Andrea de Scaphis, a deconsecrated eighth-century church at Via dei Vascellari 69 in the Trastevere neighborhood.
Sprüth Magers poster invitations
Invitation cards/posters by Sprüth Magers.
The gallery emerged amid an extraordinary outburst in contemporary art that took place in Cologne in the early 1980s. Its first iteration as Monika Sprüth Gallery opened in 1983 with an exhibition of paintings by Andreas Schulze and was soon followed by exhibitions of Rosemarie Trockel and Peter Fischli David Weiss. Over the next few years, George Condo, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Louise Lawler and Cindy Sherman all showed at the gallery and have continued to do so for the last thirty years. In 1991, a second gallery opened in Cologne under the name of Philomene Magers. Early exhibitions included Ad Reinhardt’s Black Paintings, Robert Morris’s felt pieces and John Baldessari’s photographs and text paintings from the 1960s. The two galleries merged into a single entity in 1998, and in 2000, a Munich space opened with Ed Ruscha’s exhibition Gunpowder and Stains.
In 2003, Sprüth Magers Lee opened in London with an exhibition of works by Donald Judd. In 2007, Sprüth Magers relocated to Grafton Street, Mayfair, inaugurating the space with a show of new photographs by Andreas Gursky. In 2008, the gallery established its flagship space in a former dancehall in Berlin Mitte, not far from the city’s Museum Island, debuting with Thomas Scheibitz and George Condo. The latest chapter in the gallery’s history was the launch of the Los Angeles space in 2016, presenting new works by John Baldessari. Located on Wilshire Boulevard, just across the road from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it is housed in a two-story building designed in the late 1960s by renowned West Coast architects William L. Pereira & Associates.” Source
Ida Ekblad/Tobias Madison
Invitation card by Zurich gallery Karma International for the show by Ida Ekblad and Tobias Madison in 2009.
Anonymous user comment: “The ‘non-book’ shape of the fold is intriguing and the graphic layout causes it to open in a dramatic way: first displaying a bold pattern, then revealing a name, finally opening up to a wholly unexpected image – in this case a geographic-dancegraphic hybrid.”
A.C. Kupper
Ich Vermute, dass diese Karte zu einer Gruppenausstellung im Helmhaus von A.C. Kupper gestaltet worden ist. Ich finde sie sehr schön… aber der Lack lässt mich zweifeln…
Oliver Ross und Kerim Seiler stellen aus
Weil Oliver es gefunden hat und weil es die Karte noch gibt. Es war sicher eine schöne Ausstellung, ich habe sie nicht gesehen. Den Ausstellungsraum gibt es wohl nicht mehr. Wenn man die Karte dreht, im Kreis immerzu, wird sie meditativ. Auf dem Umschlag ist eine Briefmarke mit einem süssen, nach vorn gebeugten Vögelchen. Ausserdem ist das Adressetikett, mit der Hand geschrieben, das macht Sinn. Jutta Pillen-Kontetzka
Walcheturm / Franziska & Bruno Mancia
In the early 90s the invitation cards of Zurichs legendary Galerie Walcheturm (run by Eva Presenhuber) showed the gallery space and its visitors instead of artworks or exhibitions. These invitations cards were intriguing and made us happy. It felt like a different way of doing things and it was. All pictures were taken by Franziska & Bruno Mancia (FBM Studio, see their book documenting their practice here)
Michael Riedel
A poster by German artist Michael Riedel. As Martin Kippenberger or Lawrence Weiner, Riedel’s announcements, invitation cards, and flyers are an important element of his art practice. They communicate communication, they brand branding, the archive archiving and they record recording. If you have them all, you may have everything and nothing.
User comment: “It has to have 3 ingredients: 1. image; 2. text; 3. a form (more than a sheet of paper)
It has to do something – turn, fold, flip. A key aspect is text of ranging sizes + fonts, especially the text which runs off the page, forcing you to follow it, open the poster, rotate it to see more. I want to touch it, to zoom in and out – that is, to conclude a thought and have my attention renewed by an adjacent image.” Lara Mehling
Hans-Peter Feldmann
The invitation card for Hans-Peter Feldmann’s show at Galerie Francesca Pia. Here what wikipedia writes: “Hans-Peter Feldmann (born 1941 in Düsseldorf, Germany) is a German visual artist. Feldmann’s approach to art-making is one of collecting, ordering and re-presenting.”
User comment: “Ich mag das Foto weil alles auf einmal passiert: vorwärts, rückwärts, hinsitzen, aufstehen, Höflichkeit, Hinterhalt. Den Künstler kenne ich nicht.” Ludwig Berger
Ein Schuss Jimi Hendrix
User comment: “Die Postkarte hat mich auf den ersten Blick wegen der Grafik angesprochen.
“Black & grey in blau mit einem Schuss Jimi Hendrix.” Manuel
Das Grafische Werk von Martin Kippenberger
Martin Kippenberger erklärte seine Einladungskarten zum grafischen Werk: “Ich habe dann ein paar Dinge im Sinne eines Wiedererkennungsprinzips genommen, wie zum Beispiel auf den Einladungskarten, wo ich drauf bin, und die dann zu meinem graphischen Werk geworden sind. Wer alle Karten gesammelt hat, hat das komplette graphische Werk von Kippenberger.” (aus Martin Kippenberger Kippenberger leicht gemacht, Interview mit Daniel Baumann, Genf, 1997) Für mehr Kippenberger Karten, hier klicken.