P.S.1 Museum — Fall Exhibitions Preview Invitation, 1989

Catherine Beaugrand, André Cadere (1934–78), Raymond Hains
The Institute for Contemporary Art / P.S.1 Museum, Long Island City, New York
15 October 1989

21 × 10.5 cm

Offset print on light card stock; recto printed, verso blank
Condition: very good; light handling wear, minor corner softening, light age toning, blank reverse clean overall

A reception card in which the institution supplies the image.

Not the work.
Not the exhibition.
The building.

A cropped view of the P.S.1 roofline is used as the stable visual support while names, dates, and programmes are passed across it. The same image appears on other P.S.1 invitations from the period, which places this card less in the register of design than in that of reuse: an administrative image kept in circulation.

Beaugrand, Cadere, Hains. Three positions brought together under one printed roof. The card does not interpret them. It hosts them.

As shop/object, it reads as a minor institutional readymade: architecture reduced to sign, invitation reduced to function, exhibition reduced to list. A small transfer object in which authorship is shared between venue, programme, typography, and repetition.

New York, late 1980s.
A card for entry.
A card in which P.S.1 pictures itself.