Ten Shows is artist book originally produced in 2002 and then republished by the Or Gallery, Vancouver, and Black Dog Publishing, London, in 2014. The publication is a “catalog” for ten exhibitions, curated and presented at the California Institute of the Arts Slide Library in 2002. Each “show” consisted of 35 mm slides culled from the CalArts library collection and placed in ten separate slide sheets on the slide library’s light table. Slides were organized into simplistic groupings that emphasized the similarities in their formal characteristics rather than their content.
Taking the singular viewpoint of this one institution, manifested in its collection of historical slides, Ten Shows charts an exclusively visual trajectory into a now-obsolete medium of documentation. Many slides are unique to the CalArts collection and show the history of the institution and its place within the greater art world. Included in the book are reference images for general subjects such as astronomy or aeronautics, familiar images from popular culture, and multiple copies of canonized art historical works. The catalog subjectively categorizes and takes stock of the institution’s now-obsolete collection.
