This Title is an Artwork of Mine

A Kassen, Kristoffer Akselbo, Walead Beshty, Mikkel Carl, Simon Denny, FOS, Ryan Gander, Marc Ganzglass, Tue Greenfort, Jens Haaning, Mette Hersoug, Marie Kølbæk Iversen, Henrik Plenge Jakobsen, Jacob Jessen, Marijn van Kreij, Jette Hye Jin Mortensen, Marc Nagtzaam, Navid Nuur, Henrik Olesen, Amalia Pica, Lea Porsager, Pind, Nikolaj Recke, Katya Sander, Kasper Sonne, Simon Starling. The idea originates from the sixties. In 1966 Mel Bochner exhibited "Working drawings and other visible things on paper not necessarily meant to be viewed as art". The show simply consisted of four binders placed on separate plinths. They each contained photocopies of various material selected according to the title. Two years later, gallerist Seth Sieglaub published "The Xerox book". Featuring works by Carl Andre, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, and Lawrence Weiner among others, the publication was a proposition for the exhibition catalogue as an artistic medium in its own right. Quite recently Mel Bochner's groundbreaking exhibition has been promoted through the publication of four completely identical catalogues. Instead of showing the four slightly varying photocopied versions of the original material, they have all rather surprisingly been made from one and the same photographic reprint. Seth Sieglaub's project is characterized by a similar paradox because in the end it proved far too expensive to produce a book made entirely photocopies. Thus "The Xerox Bbook" was duplicated using a regular printing press. Nevertheless, these two exhibitions radically transformed our comprehension of what art might be. But as Lucy Lippard has pointed out this so-called "dematerialization of the art object" all too quickly turned into a sort of "Xerox aesthetics". Functioning as a very successful brand, this particular look gave conceptual art its pyrrhic victory as it led most of its social and political ambitions to a dead end. Neither photocopy nor offset print are more neutral, or perhaps objective, than any other media. Their physicality is no less tangible than say oil paint, plaster or bronze, and if you consider a publication to be an exhibition in its own right it's probably located somewhere between the white cube and public space. However, its key strength is that it enables concentrated conceptual and sensuous qualities to flow across time and space. Anyone getting their hands on a copy of this book - whenever or wherever - will experience the presence of the artworks. "This title is an artwork of mine" presents 26 original works of art that exist solely as printed pages in a catalogue. The invited artists have more or less freely dealt with this context : graphic (re-)presentation of art. "This title is an artwork of mine" is a presentation and distribution of these rather different applications of the catalogue as a specific exhibition space.