Inside the 2015 edition of the NY Art Book Fair (photo by Claire Voon for Hyperallergic)
The 2015 edition of Printed Matter‘s NY Art Book Fair opens to the public today and in anticipation we reviewed some of its standout offerings. From risographs of skateboarding samurai to an essay ruminating on the public persona of Missy Elliott, the fair truly has something for everyone.
(Pick up a copy of Hyperallergic’s NY Art Book Fair zine at the fair to read these reviews — and much more — in print.)
Guide to Being Alone by Julia Arredondo
(courtesy Vice Versa Press)
Where: Vice Versa Press, Oklahoma (table A07)
We all go through stages when we’re suddenly alone, whether through a breakup, distancing from negative friends, or just deciding other people can keep away for a while. Whether you are alone by circumstance or by choice, the Guide to Being Alone by Julia Arredondo from Oklahoma’s Vice Versa Press — its first year at the NY Art Book Fair — personally delivers positive step-by-step advice in a cut-and-paste collage style. As an alternative to relying on your phone companion, the guide encourages appreciating downtime even in dark moments, getting into vinyl, taking a public transit adventure, and confidently dominating a dance floor solo. As Arredondo writes: “Don’t wait around for some fools to call, go do your thing!” —Allison Meier
Cruisin’ Cruisers by Glen Baldridge
Where: Endless Editions, New York (table A40)
This zine is inspired by a 2008 YouTube video about a man going through a midlife crisis who calls up a PT Cruiser dealership to score a “pussy magnet.” The story is a colorful tribute to a short-lived (2001–10) and retro-styled car that — as one YouTube commenter puts it — “… epitomises everything thats [sic] bad about American cars …” You can’t argue with that. —Hrag Vartanian
Girls Like Us, issue 7 by Maria Guggenbichler, Jessica Gysel, Sara Kaaman, and Katja Mater
(courtesy Girls Like Us)
Where: Girls Like Us, Amsterdam (table N57)
“I feel like we’re just now developing a serious language for artists who use their body as material,” says K8 Hardy, who designed a series of covers for the seventh issue of Girls Like Us — they look like mashups of Martha Rosler collages and Jon Rafman’s “9 Eyes of Google Street View” translated into Hardy’s distinctive self-portrait idiom — in the accompanying interview. The 120-page magazine, devoted to the theme of the body and printed almost entirely in shades of gold, features a dozen interviews, including with African-American filmmaker Barbara McCullough and German-Iranian author Jina Khayyer; an essay on a disturbing, early chapter in the history of the biotech industry by Crystal Z Campbell; and a pointed analysis of representations of black women in mainstream US media in the 1990s (from Anita Hill to Missy Elliott) by Derica Shields. —Benjamin Sutton
Temple of Skate by Hoyeah Studio
Where: Knuckles and Notch, Singapore (table A36)
Skateboarding and samurai meet in this quirky 24-page collection of risographs by Hoyeah Studio, founded by the Singapore-based illustrator Tuckwai who himself grew up skateboarding in the late 1980s. Rendered in the style of ancient Japanese scrolls, Temple of Skate’s subject is a fantasy skate park reserved for martial arts disciples and grand masters who balance on boards as they shoot arrows, perform tricks on halfpipes in the shadow of a Japanese maple, and catch air off the slanted roofs of temples. —Claire Voon
TOKYO diary by Margherita Urbani
(courtesy Commune)
Where: Commune, Japan (table A13)
For two weeks, Urbani, who hails from Italy, traveled through Japan’s capital, each day recording through sketches her observations of the striking, the strange, and the seemingly banal. The result, TOKYO diary, is less a play-by-play narrative of a first-timer’s experience than an endearing, personal glimpse into a foreign culture that hovers between modernizing and adhering to tradition. The zine’s pages present a teasing patchwork of doodles — one that will make you long to experience the city yourself. —CV
The 2015 edition of the NY Art Book Fair continues at MoMA PS1 (22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens) through September 20.
