Documents — Galerie 1900–2000, Paris, 2002

Exhibition invitation / folded gallery announcement
Offset print on textured paper stock
Approx. 15 × 10 cm (folded)
Galerie 1900–2000, 8 rue Bonaparte, 75006 Paris
Exhibition dates: 6 March–6 April 2002
Condition: very good; light surface wear and age toning consistent with handling and storage; minor softening to edges

Original period exhibition material issued for Documents at Galerie 1900–2000, the Paris gallery established by Marcel and David Fleiss and closely associated with Dada, Surrealist, and historical avant-garde material. The invitation adopts the appearance of a worn paper archive or document folder: typewriter typography over a distressed field, shifting attention from exhibition announcement toward archival fiction.

The interior functions as a compressed visual anthology of twentieth-century avant-garde circulation. References to DADAPhone, Kurt Schwitters' Anna Blume, Le Cœur à Barbe, Tristan Tzara, and Surrealist printed matter appear layered as reproductions and fragments. Rather than presenting singular artworks, the exhibition is framed through the movement of documents, journals, manifestos, and minor printed supports that historically carried these ideas into circulation.

Read as object, the invitation performs a small reversal. It announces an exhibition devoted to historical paper traces while becoming another trace itself. Not artwork, not catalogue, not document alone. A printed support describing documents that now enters the same chain of retention and circulation it originally presented.

Original period item. Shipping and handling included in listed price.