Stemming from the Barthean spirit of the 2017 opening show of
Brazilian gallery Mendes Wood DM's new space in Brussels, this catalogue
gathers new works by a selection of artists who participated in the
inaugural exhibition. It also features a fictional history of the gallery
by Oliver Basciano, associated with photographs by Mauro Restiffe.
Neither the book is a publication that arose from "Neither"
the exhibition, curated by Fernanda Brenner in 2017 to inaugurate the
Brussels gallery of Mendes Wood DM. Yet Neither the book is not a
documentation of "Neither" the exhibition. Instead a selection of the artists
who exhibited have been invited to produce new works for the page that,
alongside a fictional history of the gallery's new European home, written by
Oliver Basciano, mingle with a photographic commission from Mauro Restiffe.
They, like the exhibition, evoke a space somewhere between moving in and
feeling at home, a capturing of a place that was no longer a family abode
and not yet a fully functioning commercial gallery. By taking this conscious
pause—respecting the distance and the journey of an exhibition
from idea to materialization to memory—Neither the book hovers and
loops between proposal, scrapbook and diary.
