Purple Diary
[May 12 2017]
An extract from “A lesson in avant-gardism by Olivier Zahm” by Ingrid Luquet-Gad now online on i-D.com
[…]”An avant-garde without avant-garde,” is the expression Olivier Zahm uses to describe the creative landscape that was taking shape at that time. It’s also the title of the collection of the texts he wrote back then, collected together and published now by the philosopher Donatien Grau. The book gathers essays and reviews on art that were published in various magazines (Artforum, Flash Art, Artpress and Texte zur Kunst), in exhibition catalogues and of course in Purple, the magazine he co-founded in 1992 and that he’s still running.
The texts are bold and terse, caught in the stream of a time that they don’t try to freeze, but on the contrary, to electrify even more. “A fragmented writing, scattered, without consistency, based on chance encounters with the artists, on the current exhibitions, on the specific society life in the art world,” Olivier wrote. Theory and academic literature would have been no help at all to grasp that moment that refused to establish itself as a movement. They came later, but what this book offers us is an on-the-ground snapshot through a sketchy collection of kaleidoscopic texts.”
Text Ingrid Luquet-Gad, photo Olivier Zahm
