A. R. T.
Ana and Carl and some other couples
Audience
Keywords
The 2014 exhibition “Ana and Carl and some other couples” presented a printout of an article published in the New York Times on February 12, 1988, detailing Carl Andre’s acquittal on the charges that he pushed his wife, Ana Mendieta, to her death from the window of their 34th-floor apartment in Greenwich Village. The exhibition also included 126 books, cut through with circular holes, one to four inches in diameter. Embedded within these holes, at varying depths, was imagery extracted from 1960s and 1970s pornography magazines, exhibiting a variety of positions and possibilities within human sexual interaction — a catalogue of fetishes.
To coincide with the exhibition, PPP Editions has published Ana and Carl and some other couples in an edition of 126 copies. Bound without covers and printed on perforated paper, each of the 126 original book-collages is paired on every double-page spread with a centered black circle, which expands in diameter as the book progresses until it fully covers the final pages in solid black. The multiple mappings of these holes suggest the camera coming at the viewer, who finally is absorbed within a larger circle that eventually exceeds the bounds of the book. Each edition is signed and numbered in white marker by the artists and housed in a black glassine wrapper affixed with a wafer seal.