Micah Lexier
Interview realised in summer 2023
Micah, your practice includes a bunch of forms, and correct me if I am wrong, but I think we could say that your work is mainly on and around language questions and space. Either it takes place in/on a building wall, in a gallery space or a book (including cards, posters…), there is always something dealing with how the space drives the work. The question may sound a little direct, but how did you come out working with artists edition?
When I started, I didn’t really have any manual skills, so I had to figure out a way to make art that didn’t have anything do with my ability to physically make things. Every early on, while I was still in art school, I realized that I could do the things that I could do well to make money and then use this money to hire people to make things for me that I couldn’t make myself. In many cases, that meant getting items commercially printed or fabricated. And many of these processes resulted in multiple copies being made, which naturally lent themselves to being (called) multiples or editions. That worked for me, so I just kept making work that way. Now, more than 40 years later, that’s still the way I work.
How would you define the place of publications in your practice?
There’s a great quote by Dieter Roth that has so much resonance for me – “I make art only to support my habit which is to write and publish books.” I get that. It’s gotten to the stage where I only want to do an exhibition if there’s also an opportunity to publish something to go along with it. Multiples and small editioned printed objects are the purest expression of my ideas. I wish I could make a living just making these kinds of items. I’m working towards that.
I know you also collect artists editions and artists prints.You even created with some other collectors a ‘‘secret’’ group, that regularly gathers to talk about your latest works you all bought. Once a year, you all invite an artist to propose a work and publish it as a small print run. Could you please tell us more about that circle you are in? Its origins, its purpose, etc.
Well, it’s not a secret group, but it is an exclusive group, as once we reached ten members, we decided not to let any more in the group as it would become too unruly and/or bureaucratic. Ten is just the right number of people. We are called ‘‘Book Club’’ and are a group of artists and writers and curators that all share a love of artists’ books and multiples. We don’t have a fixed number of meetings each year but meet up when someone feels like hosting or when enough time has passed that a meet-up is over-due. We have meet up two or three times a year since 2009 and have also had guest visitors and guest hosts who have shown us their collections. Starting in 2012 and for the next four years, we commissioned an artist to design a ‘‘Book Club’’ book bag that we published in a small edition for the members to disperse as they pleased. There’s a nice online article about us that can be found1.
Dealing with artists publications as a curator is always kind of tricky as it is a form that we usually show under glasses. Keeping in mind the nature of these objects, they are books. How do you deal with the fact that their first purpose was to be read, and manipulated?
I get really frustrated looking at things under glass, but I completely understand. But, I think I prefer the original object under glass to a replica that I can touch.
Checking at your instagram is really interesting as it looks like a display used to share what you are looking at and what passes through your hands. What role would you say Instagram plays for you?
I know that people like to complain about Instagram but it’s been a positive platform for me. My posts take several different forms, and I think it’s this combination of content that makes it of value for the viewers. Some posts are about promoting something I have made, either a multiple, zine or an exhibition, or something that someone else has made that I want to bring a little attention to. Other posts are about sharing things that inspire me, including any number of found items. And still other posts are more personal, either paying homage to an artist who died or reaching out to help me solve a mystery, for instance helping me identify the name of an anonymous artist’s multiple. This is something that happened recently, and I was able to identify the maker because of a tip from a follower.
As a collector, a curator, but most of it an artist who works with that format, I was wondering what were your thoughts on the contemporary publishing practices?
I’m thrilled by the proliferation of smaller publishers and how accessible everything and everyone has become because of Instagram. I’ve been invited to created projects with a few publishers I previously didn’t know. And each has been a very positive experience. There have been a range of business practices with some publishers paying an artist fee upfront, others sending copies of the zine as payment, and others who pay once a certain number of copies have been sold. I am fine with all these models, as long as the publisher is up front about it from the very beginning. I think the proliferation of Artist Book Fairs combined with Instagram has created a very exciting moment for contemporary publishing.
- See https://torontostandard.com/culture/shelf-life/ ↩︎