I spend a fair percentage of my time here at frieze opening post, press releases and emails – anything from unsolicited artists’ monographs to generic e-flux reminders. Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think the job is below me. In fact, I find it a secretly enjoyable task. And I’m not trying to brag, but I’ve devised what I think is a pretty organized filing system by which I sort the thousands of emails and invitations by region, creating a special stack on my desk for the most interesting and putting a little orange ‘flag’ next to emails about important exhibitions in geographically-divided email folders. Nevertheless, there are some emails and letters that stubbornly evade my ingenious filing system, yet I don’t have the heart to delete them or toss them in the bin. These are the updates from toothpick sculptors, artists hawking their portraits of Putin, e-blasts about female pirates, and the like. Until now, I’ve been putting them in a folder that I simply call ‘mailbag’. And now, dear readers, because I don’t know what to do with them, I hereby open my frieze Berlin office mailbag for you – extracting the good, the bad, the tasteless, the intriguing, the bizarre, the absurd, the cringe-worthy, the inspired. Enjoy!
Our first entry comes from the gender-insensitivity department. Here’s a press release I received announcing: “Global Art Show Inspires New Perspective on Gender-Based Violence”. The show features 32 artists whose work deals with violence against women. The title of the show? “Off the Beaten Path”. You can’t make this stuff up, people. The exhibition comes to Tijuana, February 5, 2010.
Equally curious was this email, announcing an exhibition by a Paris- and Shanghai-based artist:
Dear friends,
please note my upcoming exhibition “vomiting world” at Gallery Teapot.
