William S. Burroughs — Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, 1988

Exhibition invite / folded catalogue. Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, 1988. 14.5 × 22 cm folded; 73.5 × 22 cm unfolded. Offset printed on textured cream stock, sepia-toned images and text.

Condition: good vintage condition; light age toning, minor handling marks, soft fold wear and small signs of storage consistent with printed gallery ephemera of the period.

Folded exhibition brochure for Burroughs’ show at Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, December 19, 1987 – January 24, 1988. The cover features Kate Simon’s now-celebrated photograph of Burroughs taken in Lawrence, Kansas on September 14, 1987: fedora, porch, shotgun across his lap. By this point Burroughs had moved beyond his literary reputation into a late visual practice, including the “shotgun paintings” made by firing into paint cans and wooden targets.

Inside, the brochure unfolds to include Burroughs’ essay “Entrance to the Museum of Lost Species” (1987), alongside sepia reproductions of works and the formal exhibition checklist. The text is not a standard gallery essay. It reads closer to a Burroughs field note: part description, part hallucinated catalogue, part verbal extension of the paintings. The works become strange specimens, fragments, creatures, ghosts, surfaces opened by violence and accident.

A strong Shafrazi-period document: literary figure, image-maker, weapon, painting, catalogue and invite compressed into one folded printed object.