AA.VV. - Seth Siegelaub / January 5 – 31, 1969

“(...) One of the problems with running a gallery is that you don’t run it - it runs you. It becomes an alienated activity. You have fixed overheads and regular monthly schedules and obligations - a rhythm of work whereby you have to fill up the space. (...). This problem led me to think about other possible ways to show art without these kinds of fixed overheads and responsibilities and to rethink the question of exhibitions and galleries. All this, along with the kind of work being done by the artists with whom I was involved, led to the production of (irregular) exhibitions in catalogues, not catalogues to promote or sell work, but catalogues that were the work - or at least, that had a different kind of relationship to the work: exhibitions in outdoor public spaces, in temporarily rented spaces, in post office boxes; a whole series of situations and contexts outside of the traditional art structure - both mental and physical. I organized about 20 projects between February 1968 through July 1971”. CG: “But undoubtedly it was the - January 5-31, 1969 exhibition - which was the inaugural event, since it was a group exhibition”. SS: “For me, it was one project among others, even if it brought together publicly for the first time Kosuth and Weiner, who were living in Manhattan, Barry, living in the Bronx, and Huebler, in Massachusetts. Like all the projects, its preparation and realization were collective: the number of works to figure in the exhibition space (two by each artist) and in the catalogue, which documented these works as well as others which were not included in the exhibition (in total, eight for each artist); and so on.” (“Seth Siegelaub: Some remarks on so-called “Conceptual Art” - extracts from unpublished interviews with Robert Horvitz (1987) and Claude Gintz (1989)”