24 IDEAS ABOUT PICTURES
By Paul Zelevansky
Book Launch
Saturday, December 13, 2008, 5-7 pm
Printed Matter is pleased to announce a launch for Paul Zelevansky’s latest publication, 24 IDEAS ABOUT PICTURES, a 21st century primer made up of 24 visual/verbal propositions about the grammar, meaning, and metaphysics of pictures. Please join us along with the artist on Saturday, December 13, from 5:00 – 7:00 PM to celebrate the launch. Printed Matter is located at 195 Tenth Avenue (between 21st and 22nd Street) in New York City.
While many books on visual culture have considered the educational, economic and social effects of print and electronic media, very few have drawn the reader inside the dynamic process of reading and interpreting images. 24 IDEAS ABOUT PICTURES asks the reader to engage with the author in a self-reflective process. Within each idea, questions lead to speculations that lead to the observation of visible effects on the page. Utilizing a step-by-step structure in which each lesson builds on those that precede it, the publication considers what makes pictures--in collusion and competition with words--alternatively powerful and unreliable as representations of reality.
24 IDEAS ABOUT PICTURES incorporates an eclectic mix of examples with an emphasis on commonplace images (clip art, postcards, family snapshots, road signs, puzzles and games) whose stereotypical forms and meanings are so mundane as to recede into the background of daily life. Pictures look like us, flatter our assumptions and fuel the market in products and ideas, yet more fundamentally they are a form of currency that allows us to barter and exchange our beliefs, hopes and fears.
Paul Zelevansky was born in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles. He has been producing publications for over thirty years, including Case for the Burial of Ancestors 1 – 3, Monkey and Man, Shadow Architecture at the Crossroads Annual 19X, and SWEEP: the Exploration of a Word in Multiple Directions.
24 IDEAS ABOUT PICTURES is laser printed in black and white and is 96 pages. It can be purchased at Printed Matter’s storefront or online at www.printedmatter.org.
Printed Matter, Inc. is an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 1976 by artists and art workers with the mission to foster the appreciation, dissemination, and understanding of artists' books and other artists' publications.
Printed Matter, Inc. has received support, in part, through grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Altria Group Inc, the Milton & Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Cowles Charitable Trust, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, The Gesso Foundation, The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the Schoenstadt Family Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and individuals worldwide.
Printed Matter, Inc.
195 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY 10011
T: 212 925 0325
F: 212 925 0464
