There were these incredible Marco Maggi drypoint drawings on aluminum foil at 123 Watts, including one on a literal roll of Reynolds wrap.
There was this Tom Friedman drawing on a pedestal at Feature that was a forest of amputated daddy longleg legs.
A Sarah Sze sculpture with Tic-Tacs hot-glued to cantilevered packs of gum and boxes of French matches.
And a Felix Gonzalez-Torres paper stack where you’re not only not supposed to take the paper, but you’re supposed to keep it eight inches high. Also, it’s not printed with a dolphin motif, but embossed, so it’s irreplenishable.
These are artworks I love that give me conservation nightmares.
I don’t know about the first two, but if you want the diametrically opposite anxiety of stewarding a Felix stack from all your fellow Felix stack collectors, you are in luck. Because the fourth of five APs from the 1991 edition “Untitled” is coming up for sale again this week at Bonhams, and with a low estimate that’s 80% lower than the frankly wack estimate it had at Sotheby’s last year, and more like the ed.8/12 that sold this past summer.
Hmm, doesn’t that stack look like a little raggedy? You better keep it straight. Wait, are all those sheets at the bottom getting compressed unevenly, putting the embossment at risk of getting smushed away? Do they need to be rotated without being overhandled? Or perhaps interlaced with archival protector sheets? I’m getting anxious just looking at it.
Godspeed all seventeen of you paper conservation maniacs.
[update: sold for $20,000+5,600 buyer’s premium]