Reinventing Publishing Inside Publishing

In 2005, Italian art journalist Edoardo Bonaspetti curated Untitled, an exhibition of young artists active in the context of contemporary art in Milan since 2000. The Untitled exhibition features Italian and foreign young art practitioners living in Italy. Their conflicts with the once-active forces of discourse represented by the existing art system and their desire for new discourse inspire Bonaspetti’s concept. In the article Urgent, which describes the exhibition concept, Bonaspetti writes, “Art must be displayed so that its creative potential can be unleashed. This potential interacts with the emotions of the audience, thereby generating new visions and meanings.”

As an art writer in the artistic publishing industry, he has realized that the visual language of traditional art media, evolved from newspapers, can no longer adapt to the creative language and context of global art production, which is faster and pursues a more communicative approach to production. Young artists, curators and collectors need to break away from the original structure that has become monolithic. In 2006, he co-founded Mousse Art Magazine with Dallas Studio, which released its first issue in May.

Mousse Magazine, from its inception and initial releases, can be seen as a response to the question of linguistic authenticity in art after 2000 through the lens of art publishing practice: on one hand, the traditional art evaluation systems are increasingly out of touch with the contexts in which young artists create; on the other hand, these artists yearn for a more self-centred, free, and independent attitude and necessitating spaces for critical engagement. As a result, publication has become the preferred medium for artistic experimentation, providing opportunities for individual or collective discourses to explore alternative spaces.

This movement is deeply connected to conceptual art—since the 1960s, publications as carriers of information have played a pivotal role in the creative processes of conceptual art, where artists, focusing on ideas rather than physical forms, continually strive to loosen and subvert established languages and structures. The creation is constantly trying to unbind from the original concepts, and the connections between each structure become more flexible, thus forming publications: words may not be used as readable, images may not have narrative, and they are often seen as the personal creations of artists. The aesthetic form is challenged and becomes a secondary part of the conveyed concept, with the possibility of being overturned at any time.

Mousse has been designed to encourage free expression, taking a light-hearted, even subversive approach to re-design the staid concepts, text, images, materials, and colors of the original art magazines. Artworks are published in large formats or even across full pages on varied types of paper, with text arranged in slogan-like styles and bold colors blending contemporary art with commercial aesthetics. These elements align with a strong desire for new artistic discourses and spaces, rapidly becoming the prevailing design language in art magazine publishing.

In 2008, Mousse Publishing, a publishing project that originated from a magazine project, was established, describing itself as “developing tailor-made publishing projects.” The embrace and pursuit of flattened commercial language is dualistic. The desire for free language, the pursuit of visual and communicative aspects, and the awareness of issues quickly transformed into a “new” industry standard: becoming a part of museums, galleries, and art fairs in production and manufacturing. The logic and language of art publishing seem to have lost their dynamic, contentious, and dialectical energy, turning into a privileged role in collusion with institutions.

In 2011, Mousse Magazine collaborated with curator Jens Hoffmann on a publication project, Ten Fundamental Questions of Curating, in which ten curators were invited to respond to the project’s The ten essays examine ten fundamental themes in curating: What is a curator? What is the public? What is Art? What about Collecting? What is an Exhibition? Why Mediate Art? What to do with Contemporary? What about Responsibility? What is the Process? How about Pleasure? 

Hoffmann utilized the language of contemporary art and commercial culture that Mousse Magazine shares with galleries, collectors, museums, and biennials in the art market, stepping outside of the confines of magazines and publications with each other to create a new kind of connection. The magazine publishes ten groups of booklets in the form of supplements with each issue of the magazine: Hoffmann’s curatorial practice completes the exploration of exhibition forms and systematic structures on the platform of Mousse magazine; Mousse follows the trend and boldly changes the structure of the magazine itself to adapt to the curation and completes the re-creation of the magazine itself.

In 2014, Mousse Magazine collaborated with curator Elena Filipovic to create a new exhibition space in Mousse Magazine. Filipovic, drew on the supplement’s approach to a historical study of artist curation, The Artist as Curator. This is another interesting publishing experiment: Mousse tries to move away from magazine timeliness and instead responds to Filipovic’s notion of curation with a re-discussion of historical issues. Distancing itself from the art scene offers the possibility (albeit potentially ephemeral) of cutting art publishing off from institutional power, which turns the book The Artist as Curator into one of the few publications produced without the support of institutional funding, and, interestingly, it became one of Mousse’s best-sell publications in the marketplace.

If the previous initiatives involved creation within the structures of publishing through curatorial and exhibition research, the 2023 Mousse publication, Studio Marconi 1966 – 1980: An Anthology, took a different approach by reopening archives and engaging in an interesting visual language practice. Studio Marconi, established in Milan by the Italian frame dealer Marconi, organized exhibitions for many Italian and Western artists from the 1960s to the 1980s, actively building its own collection and network. Unlike typical art gallery agents, Marconi’s original business of making frames for artists led to close relationships with them, placing him directly in the process of art production.

In 2014, Mousse Magazine collaborated with curator Elena Filipovic to create a new exhibition space in Mousse Magazine. Filipovic, drew on the supplement’s approach to a historical study of artist curation, The Artist as Curator. This is another interesting publishing experiment: Mousse tries to move away from magazine timeliness and instead responds to Filipovic’s notion of curation with a re-discussion of historical issues. Distancing itself from the art scene offers the possibility (albeit potentially ephemeral) of cutting art publishing off from institutional power, which turns the book The Artist as Curator into one of the few publications produced without the support of institutional funding, and, interestingly, it became one of Mousse’s best-sell publications in the marketplace.

If the previous initiatives involved creation within the structures of publishing through curatorial and exhibition research, the 2023 Mousse publication, Studio Marconi 1966 – 1980: An Anthology, took a different approach by reopening archives and engaging in an interesting visual language practice. Studio Marconi, established in Milan by the Italian frame dealer Marconi, organized exhibitions for many Italian and Western artists from the 1960s to the 1980s, actively building its own collection and network. Unlike typical art gallery agents, Marconi’s original business of making frames for artists led to close relationships with them, placing him directly in the process of art production.

Under the guidance of artists’ suggestions, Marconi self-published a magazine and newspaper bearing the same name, disseminating information about collaborations, exhibitions of related artists, interviews, and critical articles. This offered a personal perspective on the publishing system of the 1970s, energizing the Italian art scene at the same time. Confronted with historical material, Mousse has re-collected the documentation and re-edited the historical act of publishing in his own publishing language, producing a magazine about magazines.

The theme of this 14th Inside-Out Practice is Reinventing Publishing Inside Publishing: A Glimpse into Mousse Publishing, selects targeted publications from Mousse’s extensive catalogue to discuss: Ten Fundamental Questions about Curating, The Artist as Curator, Studio Marconi 1966 – 1980: An Anthology, and so on, from the perspective of curatorial research, Mousse discusses the modes and methods, change and negotiation in the artistic context when the established organizational function is gradually deactivated, and reinvents and discovers the self-functional publishing practice, exploring the dynamic system to make the act of ‘publishing’ out of the organizational rules and regulations. It explores what happens when the act of “publishing” is removed from the regularizing and normalizing process of the organization within a dynamic system, clarifying the tensions brought about by each of the needs and issues of awareness and new responses. The revisiting of “reinventing publishing in publishing” is a reflection of formalization and hollowing out, and it allows us to think through art magazines and art publishing: what is the role of art publishing and criticism in the system today? If they are deactivated, how can they be oriented towards themselves and adjusted internally as a tool for practice?