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Stefan Altenburger most probably sent this invitation card to Christoph Schifferli announcing his new show in New York at Margaret Murray Fine Arts. Murray later run Murray Guy Gallery, which closed the doors of its Chelsea gallery in 2017 after 19 years of exhibitions.
Stefan Banz (1961-2021) on Altenburger: “Like Percy Rainford, Stefan Altenburger is a master of precision and restraint. He puts himself entirely at the service of the subject matter and does everything in his power to do photographic justice to the character and presence of a work of art.” Source
Today, Stefan Altenburger is an established photographer documenting exhibitions and artworks for numerous galleries, museums, and artists. If you google his name, this information shows on wikipedia: “Stefan Altenburger (Zürich, 1968) is a Swiss visual artist who is best known as musician Golden Boy for his collaborations with Miss Kittin such as the club hit “Rippin Kittin.”[1]
Swiss Institute New York invitations
A series of surprising and ambitious invitation cards by the Swiss Institute in New York designed by Patrick Li (Li Inc., est. 2000). Gianni Jetzer, SI’s its curator from 2006 to 2013, first worked with FLAG (est. 2002) by Swiss designers Aubry Broquard who, in 2008, became artists.
Specific Object Invitation cards
Specific Object (2004 – 20013) was a gallery, bookstore and think-tank dedicated to art post 1960s – specifically pop, Fluxus, minimal and conceptual – with an interest in the art that informed the 1960s and 1970s, as well artists whose works organically followed from the era.
Specific Object worked to isolate distinct works of value – historically, monetarily and / or intellectually valuable – and show them in an isolated context allowing these works, or objects, their own place, space and time. The material Specific Object presented ranged from artists’ publications, ephemera, prints, multiples and other editions to literature, music / audio works and unique artworks of the contemporary world.
In November 2004 Specific Object acquired the inventory of Barbara Moore’s bookstore Bound & Unbound. Through her bookshops Bound & Unbound and its predecessor Backworks, founded in 1976, Moore has been a seminal and innovative champion of artists working in alternative mediums.
From 1998 through 2004 David Platzker was the Executive Director of the non-profit institution Printed Matter, Inc. He is also the co-author, and co-curator – with Elizabeth Wyckoff – of Hard Pressed: 600 Years of Prints and Process (International Print Center New York & Hudson Hills Press, 2000); and – with Richard H. Axsom – the book and exhibition entitled Printed Stuff: Prints, Posters, and Ephemera by Claes Oldenburg : A Catalogue Raisonne 1958-1996 (Madison Art Center & Hudson Hills Press, 1997), which was awarded the George Wittenborn Award for Best Art Publication of 1997 by the Art Libraries Society of North America.
He has curated exhibitions of the works of Art & Project, John Baldessari, Marcel Broodthaers, Documenta 5, Conceptual Art, Marcel Duchamp, Donald Judd, Bruce Nauman, Oldenburg, Raymond Pettibon, Dieter Roth, and Edward Ruscha in addition to commissioning or curating exhibitions at Printed Matter of Angelblood, Larry Clark, Erin Cosgrove, Meg Cranston, General Idea, Jenny Holzer, Reverend Jen, Allan Kaprow, Yoko Ono, Ryan McGinness, Sonic Youth, Tom Sachs, David Tremlett, Richard Tuttle and the Guerrilla Girls.
Platzker was also the host of WPS1.org’s Recorded Matter on-line radio program. Archived programs can be found at www.artonair.org.
On May 15, 2013 David Platzker became Curator in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at The Museum of Modern Art, New York (until 2018).
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
Marina Abramovic
User comment: “The card seems to be written on a typewriter. Could be a classic one like Olympus or something like this. I Ask myself where she is, in which room? From where she had the typewriter. What other stuff she did with it?” Daniel Conceicão
Luigi Ghirri
Luigi Ghirri (1943–1992) spent his working life in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.
“Inspired in part by the Conceptual art of his time, Luigi Ghirri used his camera to examine the relationship between the physical world and the world of images. His subject was the landscape around him, but his photographs are much more than visual documents of 1970s and 1980s Italy. With his uncanny eye for composition, Ghirri searched out chance arrangements in the human-built world, framing them in his camera’s viewfinder like found photomontages. He worked in color because, as he put it, “the real world is in color,” and he made modestly sized meticulous prints, rarely producing more than one or two from each image.” Excerpt of the press release by Mathew Marks Gallery for this show in 2014.
Temporary Vitrine by Arthur Fink
Bags for books curated by Swiss art historian Arthur Fink, one of the founders of Hacienda, an independent art space in Zürich.
Invitation cards using books
Yesterday I was musing on the fact that so many invitation cards use books in their design – whether it be images of book covers, photographs of real books, paintings or drawings of books, stacks of books, self made books, images from performances using books…..and then Daniel came in and I was explaining my idea to him and he mentioned that Christoph Schifferli, from whose personal collection a lot of the invitation cards in this exhibition come from, had himself planned an entire wall in the exhibition based around the concept of cards using printed matter – a nice serendipity. I was a little stricter in my choice though and only photographed cards using books, not printed matter in general.
Ron Nagel
Ron Nagle (b. 1939) was born in San Francisco, where he currently lives and works. His first one-person exhibition took place in 1968.
Les Levine
Les Levine (born 1935) is a naturalized American Irish artist known as a pioneer of video art and as a conceptual artist working with mass communication. In 1965, Levine, with Nam June Paik, were among the first artists to buy and use portapaks. Thus he was one of the first artists to try television as a medium for the dissemination of art. Levine has written on art for Arts, The Village Voice, Art in America and the Saturday. (wikipedia)
Av Isaacs opened a framing and art-supply store in 1950 before founding Isaacs Gallery on Yonge Street in 1961. The gallery went on to become one of the country’s leading commercial spaces, representing artists including Michael Snow, Greg Curnoe, Gathie Falk and Joyce Wieland. It also hosted avant-garde events such as concerts and performances.