Objects as Magazines — Artbook, Milan until 17th June
My exhibition, Objects as Magazines, opened last weekend in Milan. Here’s the introduction, with the address below. More pictures on the Flickr stream.
OBJECTS AS MAGAZINES
“When ASPEN arrives, you don’t just read it – you hear it, hang it, feel it, fly it, project it, even sniff it.”
Former editor of Ad Age, Phyllis Johnson had a vision of a magazine that would escape the traditional, bound format. The “multimedia magazine” she launched in the USA in 1965 didn’t last more than ten issues, and so never produced its promised “Buckminster Fuller issue, with each article folding into a geodesic dome”. But it was an early and courageous piece of publishing that refused to accept what a magazine was supposed to be.
As our lives have become ever more digital, so the importance of craft has increased. There are few truly remarkable things that I can send you in an email, but if I give you a sealed box, a whole world could be hiding inside – a world you can feel and touch and smell, a world you can hold up to the light and stick on your wall and carry in your pocket. And if that sealed box is a magazine, then the excitement of opening it will be repeated every time a new edition is published.
The magazines in this exhibition are not for everybody. Some of those on display use a conventional format, but attach unexpected objects to their covers to try and stand out. Others push the standard format to its limit, becoming collectible objects in their own right. There are magazines here that have adopted an unusual format and stick to it; others change format each edition, their only constant being flux. There are even digital magazines that have crossed over into the physical world.
The very best magazines are really just like boxes, stuffed with surprises and ideas, clever design and thought-provoking content.
The very best boxes are magazines as well.
Explore, enjoy, find worlds.
Andrew Losowsky
Barcelona, May 2008
www.losowsky.com/magtastic
Objects as Magazines
Until 17th June
Artbook
Via Ventura, 5
20134 Milano
Tel. 02 21597624
UPDATE: There’s a review and some of the captions over at the Creative Review blog
