MERLIN CARPENTER — Business Women, Exhibition Invitation, Galerie Neu, Berlin, 2017

Original invitation issued for Merlin Carpenter’s exhibition Business Women at Galerie Neu, Berlin. The card records the exhibition as running from 12 June to 22 July 2017, with an opening reception on 10 June.

The exhibition presented six paintings derived from fashion imagery and organised around a recurring male figure named Graham, whose reflection occupies or interrupts images of women posed before mirrors. Carpenter used this structure to approach painting not as private expression but as a social form shaped by looking, ownership, gender and commodity value.

There is a slight discrepancy between the object and the later institutional record. While the invitation gives 12 June–22 July, Galerie Neu now records 13 June–11 August and Carpenter’s own archive gives 12 June–11 August. The card therefore retains the dates as they first entered circulation, before the exhibition was reorganised within subsequent online archives.

Printed for the first circulation of Business Women at Galerie Neu. One side carries the exhibition emblem; the other fixes artist, title, dates, reception and address.

The dates printed here differ from those retained in later online records. The invitation therefore preserves an earlier administrative version of the exhibition—information fixed once in paper, then revised elsewhere.

The object remains unchanged. Its record does not.

Offset-printed card, 17 × 12.5 cm.
Condition: good; light handling, scattered surface marks and minor edge and corner softening.