A Work Will Be Shown

A Work Will Be Shown presents a selection of artist exhibition announcements and invitations cards that the artist Maurizio Nannucci began collecting in the 1960s. Since that decade of radical avant-garde art movements Nannucci has kept and enlarged continuously his choice of these items parallel to his art practice. Taken together this book is not just a record of exhibition announcements by the artist's friends and colleagues, it is also an exploration of unleashed creativity, of courage and commitment that contemporary artists bring to their work. The conception of the book spread out a cosmogony with its multifaceted imagery, texts, photography, typography, colours and different papers that artists are applying as a free means of information which is sent internationally by postal mail. A Work Will Be Shown edited by Maurizio Nannucci, contains essays by Gabriele Detterer and Emanuele De Donno. The large spectrum of exhibition announcement cards is organized in twelve categories which are drawing attention to different aspects of creative expres­sion, semiotics and aesthetics of this medium to transmit artists' original ideas and projects: Welcome to the Opening, Each Day or by Appointment, Show A Performance, The Artist Will Show, Please Complete Clearly, Work Visible in a Given Location, Statement, Unico Concerto, Invitation & Nouvelles, The Act of Inviting or Announcing, Post-Card, Words Drawings and Diagrams, Framework, You Can Imagine the Opposite. This structure of the book as a kind of meta-text complements the personal narrative that underlies Nannucci's investigation and imprint of his choice of exhibition announcement cards. As a whole the book's two-dimensional approach results in an unusual insight into the history of contemporary art since the second half of the 20th century until today.