Un espacio tomado quizás por fantasmas

“…While artist’s publications know how to ‘speak’ about space in different ways, when they are part of an exhibition, they inhabit the exhibition space and interact with it, often problematizing it in an obvious way. Can an open book be displayed in a glass case, out of reach of visitors who are also its potential readers? Does it make sense to protect behind glass—assigning it an aura—a leaflet printed in an unlimited number of copies with the aim of conveying an eminently political message, even if it was conceived by an artist? Is it consistent to rescue a newspaper, the ephemeral publication par excellence that expires just one day after being printed, from a library’s reserve and display it in the exhibition rooms? By raising these and other questions, artist’s publications often rebel against the conventions of the exhibition space, subjecting it to tension, engaging in games of meaning with its codes, or expanding it to improbable extremes. And so, invariably, they draw attention to that space, which is unmasked and becomes visible, so that the sophisticated mechanism on which the exhibition is based is, in part, exposed: exposed to the gaze of visitors…”