Printed Matter is very pleased to present an exhibition of rarely seen artists’ books and printed ephemera of Dorothy Iannone, with support from Air de Paris, Peres Projects and Siglio Press. On view in the PS1 Dome at this year’s NY Art Book Fair, Sept 25-Sept 28, the exhibition brings together dozens of publications which probe the heart of Iannone’s artistic practice with candidly erotic, visually mesmerizing and emotionally arresting narratives.

For over five decades, Dorothy Iannone has been making exuberantly sexual and joyfully transgressive image+text works, often drawing on autobiography and incorporating lovers and friends into her stories. The publications on view trace Iannone’s search for “ecstatic unity” from its carnal beginnings in her relationships with Roth and other men into its spiritual incarnation as she becomes a practicing Buddhist. Iannone’s work—exploring sexual liberation and self-realization in a different but no less radical way than her feminist contemporaries—is rich with provocative inversions of muse and maker, sacred and profane, male and female, submission and dominance. Ever-flowing from a fertile confluence of art and life, her work is inflected in surprising ways with equal parts Tantric metaphysics and Fluxus avant-garde.

Works on view include editioned artists’ books, postcards and silkscreen prints by the artist, with the earliest titles dating from 1969. In addition to material on display, several vintage titles are being made available for purchase at the Printed Matter, including The Story of Bern (Or) Showing Colors, 1970, a livre d'artiste published by Iannone and Dieter Roth, and The Berlin Beauties Or You Have Now Idea How Beautiful You Are, Berlin,1978.

On occasion of the exhibition, Printed Matter and Dorothy Iannone will release a Fundraising Edition to support the NY Art Book Fair. The work features a 1976 drawing from Ianonne, produced here as a screenprint in white ink on black museum board, signed in an edition of 100. Available at the Printed Matter booth.

On Friday, September 26 at 6 PM in The Classroom (at MoMA PS1), art critic and writer Trinie Dalton and Siglio publisher Lisa Pearson will talk about Iannone’s provocative and pioneering work.

The exhibition coincides with the publication release of DOROTHY IANNONE: YOU WHO READ ME WITH PASSION NOW MUST FOREVER BE MY FRIENDS, from Siglio Press.

Dorothy Iannone (b. 1933, Boston, MA) has been making artist’s books, paintings, drawings, sculptures, sound pieces and video installations in relative obscurity since the 1960s until The Wrong Gallery featured her work at the Tate Modern in 2005, followed by The Whitney Biennial in 2006 with the work “I Was Thinking Of You,” (1975/2005) colloquially known as “the orgasm box.” Her first solo exhibition at a U.S. museum, “Dorothy Iannone: Lioness,” took place in 2009 at the New Museum in New York when she was seventy-six years old. The New York Times wrote at the time: “High priestess, matriarch, sex goddess: the self-taught American artist Dorothy Iannone has been called all these things and more.” Her most recent solo exhibitions include “Innocent and Aware” at the Camden Arts Centre, London, and “Imperturbable” at the Centre National Édition Art Image, Paris, both in 2013. This year, in 2014, a solo show at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich follows “This Sweetness Outside of Time,” a major retrospective at the Berlinische Galerie für Moderne Kunst, Berlin.

Image Credits:

1. “The Statue Of Liberty,” 1977 by Dorothy Iannone, in You Who Read Me With Passion Now Must Forever Be My Friends, Siglio, 2014.

Courtesy of the artist, Air de Paris, Paris. Photo Marc Domage.

2. Excerpt from “The Berlin Beauties,” 1978 by Dorothy Iannone, in You Who Read Me With Passion Now Must Forever Be My Friends, Siglio, 2014.

Courtesy of the artist, Air de Paris, Paris.

3. “Ten Scenes,” 1969 by Dorothy Iannone, in You Who Read Me With Passion Now Must Forever Be My Friends, Siglio, 2014.

Courtesy of the artist, Air de Paris, Paris. Photo Hans-Georg Gaul.