Archizines is a celebration of contemporary independent and alternative architectural publishing from around the world. The touring exhibition makes its American debut at Storefront for Art and Architecture with a bespoke design that draws inspiration from the quintessential New York model of publication display – the newsstand – and turns it on its side. Instead of a vertical, 2-dimensional billboard, the show offers a horizontal, 3-dimensional field of objects: 80 architecture publications displayed on delicate metal rods, that emerge from the floor. The exhibition removes all other content from the space, creating an information vacuum that focuses the visitor’s attention on the objects themselves: 80 architecture magazines, fanzines, and journals from over 20 countries that provide new platforms for commentary, criticism, and research.
Into this exhibition, Arch-Art! Books inserts a selection of artists’ books culled from Printed Matter, Inc.’s current catalog and presents them as a medium through which architecture might be photographically explored. Each book is a flâneur’s response to the urban environment, documenting the social patina and environmental decay left on architectural space. The design hangs the books from the ceiling, organized by size in a line that cuts through and displaces the field of existing Archizines publications.
Together, the complementary shows will form an exhibition of exchange and dialog; mining the overlap and friction found in the recent resurgence of alternative and independent architecture and art publishing from around the world.
