Show (&) Tell by Lawrence Weiner - 1992: The Films and Videos of Lawrence Weiner

Show (&) Tell: The Films & Videos of Lawrence Weiner first paperback edition, in very good condition

As a person and a character, Lawrence Weiner has a complex relationship towards his own work that is, to the work as it exists in its most simple, pure state: the written notations. He loves making them, it is his profession and he is very good at it. Why should he bother to make anything other than those marvellously pristine notations, isolating the properties of matter within a single clear-out phrase weightless, soundless, colourless, odourless but holding by the precision of the beauty of the phrasing itself. A question often asked, especially in the early days (when 4 First Quarter and A Second Quarter were made) was why most of the physically quite unspectacular little money he earned with his work disappeared into the production of the films, tapes, books and records. After all, his philosophical or even moral conviction was that in a world cluttered with things, a work of his, once formulated in single, inexpensive words (in language that belonged to everybody who could read and write) could be built, of course, but it being built was not relevant to its continued existence as an artwork. We discussed this a number of times and after each discussion it was generally decided that, yes, he should devote himself entirely to the real work, the phrasing of the notations and the rest of it, the various possible forms of realization should be up to others. But nothing came of it. One reason is that Lawrence Weiner is too exuberant and sociable, a person who loves to drink, to smoke and to talk, preferably until dawn. It is very difficult for him to be alone with his sparse, minimal descriptions. He likes being in a kind of social mise-en-scene and he loves simply to make pictures. His studio is an active workshop in which he continually invents typographic designs for his phrases. The most direct way to put the notations into another context enlarging words, giving them colour, making them into paradigmatic drawings, doing all that in order to see how a particular structure would behave (visually, atmospherically) when out of its strict confines it is allowed to move within the boundaries of a sheet of paper. This joy of experiment has led to a great number of posters and books, intense and bright and highly imaginative " orchestrations " of the work, and also to wonderful installations for exhibitions, when he inserts the notations in the architectural framework of a gallery or museum. What has always struck me was, apart from the clarity, the visual richness of the work once it was put into context. Looking back over more than 25 years of work, the generosity of this artist is quite impressive. Although he was supposed, as a so-called Conceptual artist, to be reticent, he could never stop inventing new forms and new transformations; also, when in terms of artworld strategy, it was not very prudent to do so.