MAY #6 (Paul Thek)

Conceived as a collective space in which to develop thoughts and confront positions on artistic production, May magazine examines, quaterly, contemporary art practice and theory in direct engagement with the issues, contexts and strategies that construct these two fields. An approach that could be summed up as critique at work – or as critique actively performed in text and art forms alike.
Featuring essays, interviews, art works and reviews by artists, writers and diverse practitioners of the arts, the magazine also intends to address the economy of the production of knowledge – the starting point of this reflection being the space of indistinction between information and advertisment typical of our time. This implies a dialogue with forms of critique produced in other fields.

This 6th issue focuses on a selection of writings about the artist Paul Thek (1933–1988), which we are publishing in the wake of his first American retrospective at the Whitney Museum last autumn, following a retrospective organized by the ZKM that circulated between 2007 and 2009 in Europe.

Preface

Paul Thek, A Fish Out of Water
Paul Sztulman

“I don't want to give myself to trash...”
Marietta Franke

Povera Today
Antek Walczak

You are Invited to be the Last Tiny Creature
Chris Kraus

Jana Euler, “Form Follows Information Exchange”
Nicolas Ceccaldi

new york report
David Lieske