SPECIAL EDITIONS: ARTISTS’ MAGAZINES. World Book Day 2025

From the perspective of the growing importance that process-based practices have gained in art in recent decades, artists’ editions are today considered objects of experimental creation in their own right. They are, in themselves, a form of artistic expression. They emerged, as we know them today, in the 1960s and their development is closely linked to the context of conceptual art. The majority are published by the authors themselves or by independent collectives, in such a way as to dilute the traditional roles of artist and publisher, leading to the transformation of objects into a field of flexible and, in most cases shared, creation; the artists themselves control the creative process and develop their content in the most disparate media, using different techniques that allow alternative languages to emerge. Text, image, collage and even three-dimensional elements come together in these languages, in such a way that the boundaries between the book, the work of art and the publishing medium become blurred.

This exhibition brings together a series of periodicals in different formats. Some are distributed free of charge and in inexpensive publishing formats, while others are facsimiles of magazines from the early 20th century. Art, creation, humour, irony, political stances or even the breaking-up of exhibition spaces are some of the areas they cover. Some of them, as occurs with assembled magazines, are extremely visual and transcend the mere reading of a text which lacks here the primacy and importance often afforded it in another kind of more normalised or commercial magazine. The forms, the images, the objects and the textures, by contrast, take on a more prominent role and stimulate the senses to provide unique experiences and produce artistic messages far removed from the institutional framework represented by galleries, critics or museums.