GOSPEL ABRIDGED

Peter Norton's Christmas multiples have recently been donated to the MoMA store where shoppers may now purchase them as part of a fundraiser for P.S.1.

Pictured here is Richard Kostelanetz's "Gospel Abridged," a CD containing a "polyphonic reading" by four readers of select portions of the New Testament text.

Items are available in limited supplies.

ARE CLIPS PERMISSIBLE ANYMORE?

A question I posted in earnest to a reader's forum on the Fantastic Man web site is all about the tie clip.

Read about it and please respond to it here:

http://www.fantasticman.com/forum/the-tie-clip-conondrum/

CJ 2009

This poster by Andy Fabo is one of among sixteen full-color offset prints included in a fund-raising portfolio being officially launched this weekend at Art Metropole (Toronto).

Other artists include David Altmejd, John Greyson, Bruce LaBruce, Glenn Ligon, Will Munro, and Daryl Vocat.

The posters measure about 19 x 13 inches and are signed/numbered by their respective artists in a total edition of only 50 copies.

(Seems unreasonably inexpensive at less than $7 each.)

DISABUSEMENT SOUGHT

When does pseudonymity gloss over into full-fledged fraudulence?

(That's not a set-up for a punch line, but a sincere query.)

My interest in this distinction was recently piqued as I re-viewed one of Roe Ethridge's portraits from 2001 of JT LeRoy which shows the young writer -- identity duly concealed by cutting off his head -- sporting a raccoon baculum pendant while peeling a piece of fruit.

By taking this photographic portrait, was Ethridge knowingly complicit with Albert in perpetuating a media delusion?

And what was the full extent of actor Michael Pitt's involvement with this ploy, as the marketing photograph used to sell Sarah-related merchandise depicts the actor shirtless and wearing a signed version of the sexual amulet?

The authentic and the disingenuous can be found to coincide as seamlessly as an object and its mirror reflection.

Please disabuse me . . .

10 THROWN OUT

More than a nod to Edward Ruscha is this just-released 2009 re-make of his "Twentysix Gasoline Stations."

Michalis Pichler depicts a number of petrol stations owned by the same German company that uses nearly-identical architecture and signage for each locale.

The last photograph features a quotation from said conceptual master indicating that the "eccentric stations" were first thrown out -- thus the reason for only including 16 stations total.

Published in an edition of 600 copies.

LANA

This book is a revision of a pseudonymously published work released some 35 years ago after it was initially banned and confiscated in Canada.

Will it incite as much furor this time?

FORGED DEDICATION (2000)

A limited-edition photograph by Argentinians Gabriela Forcadell and Cecilia Szalkowicz depicting Thurston Moore and containing the following forged dedication in silver ink: "For Estela/with love,/Thurston."

Inauthenticity never felt so true.