Seth Kim-Cohen [Vetting the Vetters]
with the assistance of Patrick Lovelace Editions
January 2009

Postcards are sent to every address included in the January 2009 issue of Artforum.

The collection of addresses culled from the January 2009 issue of Artforum is highly-determined, representing institutions connected to the contemporary artworld, and included in the magazine either by dint of exemplary advertising budgets or exemplary exhibitions. On the other hand, the addresses - as a group - are highly arbitrary, representing only those addresses included in the January 2009 issue of Artforum. One month earlier or later would have yielded a significantly different list.

The postcards are mass-produced, yet each one is addressed, by hand, by the artist. In so doing, the artist signs not his own name, but the name of his patron-in-potentia.

The artist has initiated a process of vetting the galleries, museums, and dealers, which will receive a postcard. The process is systematically predetermined, the order takes precedence over the execution, and the completed work is fundamentally parsimonious and systematically self-exhausting.*

* The description of the process coincides (as does this description of the coincidence) with
Mel Bochner's description of "The Serial Attitude," in the December 1967 issue of Artforum.