at RH Gallery, 137 Duane Street, New York, NY
Exhibit: May 1-June 22, 2012
Launch: June 7, 6:30-8:30 PM
Launch: June 7, 6:30-8:30 PM
Featured Readers: Gary Sullivan; Catherine Taylor; Sandra Liu
Sponsored by Dandelion Wine (Greenpoint) and Sixpoint. Broadsides and special editions by the following poets will be available for sale: Ammiel Alcalay, Kostas Anagnopoulos, Jen Bervin, Julian T. Brolaski, Brent Cummingham, Joel Dailey, Michael Ford, Ernst Herbeck, Marisol Limón Martínez, Eugene Ostashevsky, Gabriel Pomerand, Maureen Thorson, Robert Walser, and Roger Williams.
RH gallery is pleased to present Ugly Duckling Presse, an exhibition of limited edition broadsides by Ugly Duckling Presse. Highlighting recent projects, but including selected pieces from as early as 2005, this exhibition focuses on supplemental works produced by UDP that accompany the publishing house’s critically acclaimed books. Two new broadsides, which complement books from UDP’s Lost Literature series, have been exclusively printed for this exhibition. The exhibition will be accompanied by a pop-up shop showcasing selected UDP titles.
The first of the new works produce for this exhibition is a letterpress rebus poster from Gabriel Pomerand’s seminal Lettrist publication Saint Ghetto des Prêts. Published by UDP in 2006 as Saint Ghetto of the Loans (translated by Michael Kasper), the book reissued a legendary but little seen masterpiece of French book art from 1950. Born in Paris in 1926, Gabriel Pomerand was a habitué of the Left Bank bars, cafes, and clubs after the Second World War. He co-founded the Lettrist movement with Isidore Isou in the winter of 1945-1946. A prolific writer and painter, Pomerand withdrew from most Lettrist activities during the 1950s. He committed suicide in 1972 on the island of Corsica.
The second is a letterpress broadside for a forthcoming chapbook by the Austrian poet Ernst Herbeck (1920-1991). Everyone Has a Mouth (translated by Gary Sullivan) is the first English language collection of Herbeck’s work published in America. Herbeck was a well-loved Austrian poet who was institutionalized at the famed Maria Gugging Psychiatric Institute on the outskirts of Vienna. He was encouraged to write poetry by Gugging’s Head Clinician, Leo Navratil, a champion of outsider art who later established Gugging’s Haus der Künstler. From 1960 until Herbeck’s death in 1991, Navratil prompted Herbeck to write some 1,200 poems.
