FAX invites a multigenerational group of artists, as well as architects, designers, scientists and filmmakers, to conceive of the fax machine as a tool for thinking and drawing. The ongoing exhibition project features over 300 works using the fax machine as a medium. At ST PAUL St FAX will include a selection of the accumulated faxes to date as well as new fax works by New Zealand contributors invited to participate.

Faxes by nearly 100 artists sent to the initial showing of FAX at The Drawing Center, New York in 2009 form the core of the exhibition, including seminal examples of early telecommunications art. Having toured to over ten venues the FAX project now consists of more than 300 works. At ST PAUL St a selection of the transmitted pages will be archived or displayed together with the active fax machine, which will receive new faxes from the invited New Zealand contributors throughout the show. The result—an ongoing cumulative project—is a show concerned with ideas of reproduction, obsolescence, distribution, and mediation. Here, reproducible yet erratic production via the fax machine displaces traditional notions of the hand‚ still commonly associated with the medium of drawing, and foregrounds the role of drawing as a generative process.

New Zealand contributors include: Alterations, Nick Austin, David Clegg, Fiona Connor, Paul Cullen, Richard Francis, Fiona Jack, Monique Jansen, Tessa Laird, Dane Mitchell, Seung Yul Oh, OH.NO.SUMO, Nova Paul, Yuk King Tan, Narrow Gauge, Jonty Valentine, Luke Wood.

The exhibition is curated by João Ribas, curator of The Drawing Center in New York, and is accompanied by an illustrated catalogue co-published by ICI and The Drawing Center. The catalogue can be purchased online via ICI http://www.ici-exhibitions.org/index.php/publications/

About the curator:

João Ribas is curator at the MIT List Visual Arts Center and a widely published critic. He was previously curator at The Drawing Center in New York, and has organized over thirty exhibitions in the US and abroad. Ribas is the winner of an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award (2010) and two consecutive AICA Awards for Best Exhibition (2008/2009). He has contributed essays to numerous exhibition catalogs and monographs, and has been a visiting lecturer for institutions and organizations worldwide. He was previously adjunct faculty at the School of Visual Arts, New York, and currently teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design.

Participating artists:

Julieta Aranda, John Armleder, Roy Ascott, Tauba Auerbach, Fia Backström, Darren Bader, Cecil Balmond, BANK, Colby Bird, Pierre Bismuth, Barbara Bloom, Mel Bochner, Tobias Buche, Ian Burns, Cabinet Magazine, Etienne Chambaud, Cleopatra’s, Peter Coffin, Jan De Cock, Collage CenterWest, Liz Deschenes, HeHe (Helen Evans & Heiko Hansen), Morgan Fisher, Claire Fontaine, Yona Friedman, Aurélien Froment, Ryan Gander, Wineke Gartz, Liam Gillick, Marisa González, Dan Graham, Joseph Grigely, João Maria Gusmão & Pedro Paiva, Wade Guyton, Skuta Helgason, Charline von Heyl, Matthew Higgs, Eduardo Kac, Matt Keegan, Zoe Keramea, Tom Klinkowstein, Germaine Kruip, Glenn Ligon, Ronald L. Mallett, Jackson Mac Low, Corey McCorkle, Josephine Meckseper, Eric Mitchell, Simon Dybbroe Møller, Olivier Mosset, Warren Neidich, Kambui Olujimi, Serge Onnen, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Mai-Thu Perret, Michalis Pichler, William Pope.L, Seth Price, Blake Rayne, Tobias Rehberger, Kay Rosen, Amanda Ross-Ho, Pamela Rosenkranz, Arnd Seibert, Matt Sheridan Smith, Sonia Sheridan, Alexandre Singh, Dexter Sinister, Josh Smith, Anne Tardos, Cheyney Thompson, Christian Tomaszewski, Wolfgang Tillmans, Edward Tufte, Stan VanDerBeek, Olav Westphalen, Christopher Williams, Jack Whitten, Johannes Wohnseifer, Cerith Wyn Evans.

FAX is a traveling exhibition co-organized by The Drawing Center, New York, and Independent Curators International (ICI), New York, and circulated by ICI.  The guest curator is João Ribas. The exhibition and the accompanying catalogue were made possible, in part, by members of the Drawing Room, a patron circle founded to support innovative exhibitions in The Drawing Center’s project gallery; and by support to ICI from The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, and ICI Benefactor members Agnes Gund, Gerrit and Sydie Lansing, and Barbara and John Robinson.
Image: Matt Sheridan Smith, Untitled (contrast test) (detail), 2008. Courtesy of the artist and Lisa Cooley Fine Art.

_{FAX (installation view), 2011}

_{FAX (installation view), 2011}

_{FAX (installation view), 2011}

_{FAX (installation view), 2011}

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_{FAX (installation view), 2011}

_{FAX (installation view), 2011}

_{FAX (installation view), 2011}

_{FAX (installation view), 2011}