CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 9/10/2019

'Steven Leiber Catalogs' Discussion & Exhibition at Printed Matter

Wednesday, September 25, at 6PM, in advance of the exhibition Steven Leiber Catalogs (opening October 10, from 6–8PM), Printed Matter presents a conversation on the work of Steven Leiber (1957–2012), the pioneering art dealer, gallerist and expert in the field of artists’ archives and ephemera. Presented on the occasion of Steven Leiber Catalogs, newly published by Inventory Press & RITE Editions, the discussion will consider the extensive print catalogs which Leiber conceived, edited and produced over a twenty-year period, as well as explore his varied interests as a collector. Participants include Ann Butler (Director of Library and Archives at CCS Bard), David Platzker (Specific Object) and David Leiber (brother of Steven Leiber and Partner at David Zwirner), with moderation by David Senior (Head of Library and Archives at SFMoMA). A selection of Steven Leiber’s catalogs will be on view at Printed Matter during the event.

Between 1992 and 2010, Leiber produced a total of 52 dealer catalogs from his cellar-level bookstore and gallery, Steven Leiber Basement. The published catalogs were meticulous reference documents of Leiber’s for-sale offerings, featuring important ephemeral works documenting conceptual art and other avant-garde movements. They were also ambitious experimental art projects in their own right, each published in a unique/unconventional format—scrapbooks, scrolls, tabbed folders, portfolio sets, card catalogs—and produced in homage to a different historic publication or multiple, including Wallace Berman’s Semina, Ray Johnson’s Correspondence Catalog and Art & Project’s Bulletin, among many others.

Taken cumulatively, the works invite a nuanced understanding of Leiber’s work as an archivist/dealer in personal dialogue with the material he collected and sold, while positioning Steven Leiber Basement as a living, conceptual project. Leiber’s own archive-worthy output of ephemera is of interest both for its exhaustive historical record and as an intensely creative project that collapsed the space between archivist, artist and archive.

Inventory Press publishes books on topics in art, architecture, design and music, with an emphasis on subcultures, minor histories and the sociopolitical aspects of material culture. Publisher: Adam Michaels. Managing Director: Shannon Harvey.

Printed Matter
'Steven Leiber Catalogs' Discussion
Wednesday, September 25: 6PM
231 Eleventh Avenue between 25th and 26th Streets
Phone: 212-925-0325
Email: orders@printedmatter.org