Printed Matter is pleased to announce the publication of Versions, an artists’ book by Max Stolkin. The title is the first of six to be published as part of our Emerging Artists Publication Series. The publication will be launched with an event on Sunday, September 28th, 6-7PM, as part of The Classroom at the NY Art Book Fair at MoMA PS1. Organized by Stolkin, the loosely thematic hour will feature readings, screenings, and performances by Cynthia Daignault, Corina Copp, David Court, Cameron Crawford, Dieter Kiessling, Sarah Mock, and Luke Stettner.

Versions is a concise treatment of infinite regress, pairing Hubble telescope deep-field imagery with images of modernist stacking tables and several versions of the same story. Assembled from existing and authored material, the project comes into focus through 3 parallel constructions, each shaped by a repetition of form and the linear revelation of content. In Stolkin’s book, the act of turning pages becomes a platform for engaging an expansive set of themes; regress, multiplicity, narrative, depth, and deferral.

Compiled from the writing of Lewis Carroll, William James, David Hume, Bertrand Russell, and others, each text recounts the same (although slightly varied) story. Told and retold with minor variation, and each attributing various sources, the anecdotes become a parable for how our bedrock truths rely on unfixed beliefs.

Stolkin finds visual equivalents in stock imagery of modernist tables which he compiles from the internet. We see this structure once more sequenced into a third stream of images taken from the Hubble Deep Space Telescope.

The Emerging Artists Publication Series serves to showcase emerging artists whose practice has demonstrated a commitment to experimentation within the artists’ book medium in unusual and exciting ways. The series is generously funded by the Jerome Foundation.

Design and production coordination by Garrick Gott

Versions is perfect bound, measures 6 x 9”, color, printed in an edition of 350. It retails for $10.00 and is available for purchase here.

CORINA COPP’s recent books include The Green Ray, forthcoming from Ugly Duckling Presse, and the pamphlet ALL STOCK MUST GO (Shit Valley Verlag, Cambridge, UK, 2014). Other critical writing, poetry, and performance texts can be found soon or now in Cabinet, BOMB, SFMOMA’s Open Space, The Claudius App, Triple Canopy’s Corrected Slogans: Reading and Writing Conceptualism, and elsewhere. She’s currently working on a three-part play inspired by the successive forms of the work of Marguerite Duras, entitled The Whole Tragedy of the Inability to Love. Excerpts have been presented at the NYC Prelude Festival, Dixon Place, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Home Alone 2. She is a curator at the Segue Foundation, and lives in Brooklyn.

CYNTHIA DAIGNAULT lives and works in New York. She attended Stanford University, and was a MacDowell Colony Fellow in 2010. Her work was featured in a solo show at White Columns in 2011. Daignault is a recipient of the 2011 Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant. Her first solo show at Lisa Cooley Gallery opened in New York in 2013. She has published two limited edition artist books, titled CCTV (2012) and I love you more than one more day (2013), the latter on the occasion of her second solo show at Lisa Cooley. Daignault presented a new body of work at Freize New York in 2014, and will be included in the group exhibition Crossing Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Museum in the Fall of 2014.

DAVID COURT is an artist and writer whose work is focused on the grammar and socio-technical conditions of cultural production. He has presented independent and collaborative projects in institutions and public spaces in Canada and the United States and his writing has been featured in publications, exhibitions and catalogs in the US, Canada and China, including Art Papers, C Magazine, and Fillip. He was born in Canada and is based in Brooklyn.

CAMERON CRAWFORD lives and works in New York. His writing has been included in Blast Counterblast (Mercer Union/WhiteWalls), Manual for Treason for the 2011 Sharjah Biennial, and the 2012 Whitney Biennial catalogue. His artwork has been exhibited in galleries and institutions throughout the United States.

DIETER KIESSLING is the Director of Kunsthochschule Mainz. His videos, photographs, and installations alienate the technical functions of filmic devices on both the apparative level and within the filmic material itself. He was the recipient of the first Duetschen Videopreis in 1992, and has had solo exhibitions at the Sprengel Museum in Hannover, Hangesbach Gallery in Berlin, Westfälischer Kunstverein in Munich, and Kunstverein Bochum, among other commercial and non-profit institutions throughout Europe. Selected collections include ZKM Karlsruhe, Federal Republic of Germany, and Kunsthalle Bremen.

SARAH MOCK is a current artist in residence at the Seoul Art Space in Geumcheon, South Korea. She completed her Masters at the University of Fine Arts, Berlin, and previously studied under Bjorn Melhus in Kassel and Dieter Kiessling in Mainz. Her surrealistic videos and installations intervene with the relationships between culture, the artificiality of urban spaces, and the subconscious. She has presented works at the Exhibition Hall of Germany in Bonn, at the Athens Video Art Festival, and will participate in a forthcoming exhibition at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. She was the recipient of the Emy-Roeder Preis in 2014, the Heinrich Vetter Foundation Mannheim Art Prize in 2013, and the Gutenberg award of the City of Mainz in 2012.

LUKE STETTNER is an artist living in Columbus, Ohio. He attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2010. In 2013 he was the recipient of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Residency Program. He has held seven solo exhibitions, The Fold (2010), at Stene Projects in Stockholm, Eyes that Are Like Two Suns (2011), at Kate Werble Gallery, NYC, No Whiteness (Lost) is so White as the Memory of Whiteness (2012), at Stene Projects in Stockholm, and Time, Women, Stars, Death, Sleep, Flowers, Life, Eyes, A River, Dreams (2014) at Kate Werble, NYC, and this single monument (2014) at The Kitchen, NYC.

MAX STOLKIN was born Indianapolis, IN. He studied Literature at The Evergreen State College, and later studied Fine Art at Kunsthochschule Mainz. Previous print projects have been published by AKV Berlin and Night Papers. He was the recipient of a 2013 Swing Space Artist Residency from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He currently serves on the Board of Directors at Towne and Forrester, where he consults on the aesthetics of participatory research and environmental activism.