Print is dead, long live print, Part 2

Another one of my favorite exhibitors from the NY Art Book Fair is the Zurich-based Nieves. Their table was chock-full of little books and zines, and I wanted everything. The one I bought is Glamour Banner, a 20-page black-and-white zine (really more like a minicomic) printed in an edition of 150 and created by an artist collective in Los Angeles called Sumi Ink Club. The group, which is open to anyone, creates works like these as a means to encourage social interaction. Nice idea, but what I really like about the process is that it produces a dense, tangle of many different styles that merge into a rhythmic whole, and no one element can be extracted from the larger arrangement.

The front and back cover together display the main drawing:

The inner pages offer detailed views:

They've worked in color elsewhere:

There's a bit of Keith Haring in the colors and playful, rounded, maze-like designs. The vibrating hues also make me think of Ben Jones's work, though his juxtaposed colors are far more intense. Perhaps it's the Ben Jones Approved Patterns that I spot in Glamour Banner. But then, I see them everywhere—which, of course, is very much the point. 

And, look, a Ben Jones postcard I appropriated from PictureBox. Mmmm, Ben Jones Approved Hot Tub. I spent a while at the booth with Dan Nadel bemoaning the sad and incredible fact that Jones, whose solo show at Deitch earlier this year was among the best exhibitions by a young artist, and Gary Panter, one of the most original artists of the past few decades, don't have gallery representation—not to mention critical attention. Panter's influence on a younger generation of artists has yet to be fully understood, though one can certainly get a sense of it from the work of a number of artists, including Brian Chippendale and C. F., both of whom have new books coming out from PictureBox this spring. A lot to look forward to. In the cold winter interim, I'll keep occupied with Mat Brinkman's Teratoid Heights, which ought to be landing in my mailbox any moment now.