Joao Ribas

Fax Joao Ribas

Though the technology for transmitting information long-distance dates from the nineteenth century, it was the fax machine, made commercially available in the 1970s, that turned facsimiles into a primary form of communication. Artists readily exploited the fax machine for its graphic and interactive possibilities, positing the medium as a precursor to the then-nascent field of new media art and within the legacy of mail art. Fax presents works by a multigenerational group of nearly 100 artists, architects, designers, scientists and filmmakers--Mel Bochner, Liam Gillick, Wade Guyton, Glenn Ligon, Jan De Cock, Cerith Wyn Evans, Morgan Fisher and Aurelien Froment, among others--that use the fax machine as a tool for thinking and drawing. Published to accompany an exhibition at New York's Drawing Center, FAX includes the drawings, texts, examples of early telecommunications art (with inevitable transmission errors), junk faxes and fax lore that were all transmitted via the gallery's fax line.