MAY, founded in 2009 by Catherine Chevalier and Eva Svennung, is a bilingual (French/English) quarterly publication based in Paris. Conceived as an experimental platform for new forms of criticism, May proposes to examine matters pertaining to the field of contemporary cultural production through the publication of essays, exhibition reviews and interviews with international contributors varying from scholars to critics, artists, writers and curators.
In order to sustain its independent activities, MAY organised a fundraising.
Participating artists are: Heimo Zobernig, Seth Price, Martha Rosler, Wade Guyton, Peter Fischli, Jana Euler and Stephan Dillemuth.
All editions are available via email at MAY
Heimo Zobernig - Untitled - 2017
This silk-print is based on a principle of superimposition often used by Heimo Zobernig and applied here to the letters of the month “June” in reference to the name of the magazine (May), and more broadly to the fact that magazines are regularly using historical references as names (like October). Use of the modernist font Helvetica has been the signature style of the artist since the end of the 1980s. Here, the letters are superimposed with four layers of grey, producing a geometric pattern verging on the monochrome. The black is the result of superimposing layers of “transparent” black. A first version of this edition was produced by Zobernig in 2009 with the letters of May in two typographies, the one of the artist (Helvetica) and the one of the magazine (Bodoni).
Medium: Screenprint on bristol paper 320 gr.
Size: 59,4 × 42 cm
Edition of 50 + 10 A.P.
Signed and numbered
Price: € 500
Seth Price - Existence of the Dark Hippie (1), (2), (3), (4) and (5) - 2017
Price was apparently trying to draw up a new idea of what happens when the entire surface area of human skin is made one molecule thick: how much surface area would that be with a flat surface?
Medium: Acrylic and ink on ink-jet print
Size: 38.7 x 27.9 cm
Each unique
Signed
Price: € 3000
Martha Rosler - Untitled (Backyard Laundry I) - 2017
A panoramic summer scene of laundry in a city yard, featuring a colorful selection of predictably gendered underwear. The image of clothing drying in the sun—in a private, verdant space–evokes women’s labor and women’s bodies, quietly conveying the passage of time and other natural processes, enclosed and somehow constrained by the photograph’s narrow format. The photo, taken in the mid-1990s, has a continuity with Rosler’s short films, Backyard Economy I and IIfrom 1974, showing the backyard as a site of labor, in counterpoint to nature, and offering a feminist riff on home economics.
Medium: C-type print
Size: 40 x 18 cm
Edition of 50 + 10 A.P.
Signed and numbered
Price: € 800
Wade Guyton - Untitled (WG4272) - 2017 SOLD OUT
The edition is a four-page print of the front page of The New York Times website on Mayletterhead. As the edition was printed in one day, the timestamp will change, and possibly the headlines updated throughout the day. Each edition is signed and numbered. A first version of this edition was produced by Wade Guyton in 2012, in this one, the letterhead has been updated with the May’s office new address.
Medium: Epson DURABrite inkjet on letterhead
Size: 29.7 x 21.1 cm
Edition of 50 + 10 A.P.
Signed on verso of last page of each set
Price: SOLD OUT
Jana Euler - The B-motion alphabet expressing different emotions - 2017
This edition is comprised of 100 silkscreen prints representing a series of faces that are turning into letters, and appear up to four different versions, to create an alphabet, elaborated from the basic elements of the artist’s pictural language (nose, eyes, mouth). Each letter-face expresses an emotion in an exaggerated, weird and sometimes funny way and is used to compose an adjective referring to an emotion, like a complex composition of emoticons, a new form of emotional language. For that purpose, the edition is composed of two layers. The first layer is a black silkscreen of an airbrush drawing. As a second layer pink airbrush paint is sprayed on certain letter-faces to compose a word. These words come from a list of 120 adjectives expressing emotions.
Jana Euler has used these before in several paintings and called them “B-motions.” This alphabet could help to literally read these paintings, like Anonymous power game (2011) or The B-motion sending out undeliberately quiet a strong message 1-3 (2012).
In this proposal, one cannot refer to the usual binary association between a word and an emotion because each word is referring to a complete set of nuances and sometimes contradictory expressions. In the other way around, each emoticon is interpreted differently following the word it composed. It reveals the impossibility of language to deal with the dynamic and multiplicity of human feelings and their manifestation in a context of increasing poverty and normalization of emotional language.
Medium: Silkscreen and spray on paper
Size: 66 x 56 cm
Edition of 120 + 20 A.P.
Signed and numbered
Price: € 250
Peter Fischli - Logo Painting - 2017
This edition is a handmade painting based on a refused project artist Peter Fischli proposed two years ago for an in-situ work at the Frankfurt airport. The project was designed entirely on the fact that it will be refused, motivated by the idea that it would be impossible for him to do an artwork for this context. The idea was to build a hiking trail all around the airport accompanied by a walking guide written in a poor promotional style and a logo that could have been used for a t-shirt and a hat. The walking guide will be printed in the next issue of May as an insert and will complete the actual painting.
Medium: Paint on canvas,
Size: 30 x 30 cm
Edition of 12 + 2 A.P. ( + insert in May 18)
Signed
Price: € 800
Stephan Dillemuth - tit for tat - 2017
This edition features Kasperle and Gretel, two traditional characters of popular German puppet shows. Kasperle ends here with a human femur bone and Gretel with a deer leg. Complete with an embedded antenna, these editions reference the extravagant communication objects designed for our everyday lives, that tend to get smaller and smaller, then bigger and bigger, more visible, again. Our everyday chit chat is like tit for tat, from the puppet show to the stage of mobile communication, with childhood patterns continuing to inform our adult behaviour.
Medium: Plaster, telescope antenna, fake gold leaf, flocking
Kasperle: 42 cm (94 cm with antenna pulled out)
Gretel: 50 cm (100 cm with antenna pulled out)
Each edition 5 + 5 A.P. (each edition is sold separately)
Price: € 1200
