NYAB Event - "THE THING Issue 7 by Jonathan Lethem" Launch Party

"THE THING Issue 7 by Jonathan Lethem" Launch Party

Printed Matter, Inc.

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Printed Matter is pleased to announce an issue launch and signing for THE THING Quarterly, issue 7 by Jonathan Lethem. The issue, which is titled “Chaldron Optical System,” consists of a clam-shell case, a care and maintenance instruction booklet (written by Jonathan and the editors), and a pair of glasses with text embedded on the inside arms. THE THING is an experimental publication founded by San Francisco based visual artists Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan. Lethem’s issue is based on his ongoing interest in “impossible objects.” In describing his work on this issue, he says, “I've finished a novel, to be published in October, called Chronic City, in which the object in question is called a ‘chaldron’. During the years of this book's writing I found myself by chance repeatedly drawn into collaborations with a series of other artists or art-presenters (see: Jennifer Palladino, Matthew Ritchie, and THE THING) and in each case I used it to further the foolish postulate that "chaldrons" were a part of the world outside the novel, an error shared by my book's characters.” The issue was designed and manufactured in collaboration with former Jack Spade designer Matt Singer and Selima Salaun of Selima Optique. This is their first collaborative endeavor under the banner of Project Selima and Matt, a creatively driven project aimed to help artistic groups and financially strapped nonprofits. THE THING is a quarterly periodical in the form of an object. Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers are invited to create an everyday object that somehow incorporates text. Rogan and Herschend began their collaboration of THE THING in May of 2007 as way to satisfy their mutual interest in periodicals and objects. “We were interested in the physicality of the periodical,” says Rogan, “We liked this idea of a publication as an object, and we liked to imagine the paths of these things out of our hands, through the mail, and into other people’s homes.”