William Leavitt. Installations, Plays, Video, 1970–2018
This slim landscape-format art catalogue on William Leavitt makes a startling impression with its cover, which is very hard and unpleasantly rough but chimes perfectly with the conceptual approach of the artworks documented. The unconventional material is reminiscent of some of the artificial building materials that Leavitt uses in his spatial imitations of Californian interiors. Inside, two dozen of these fake interiors are presented in extremely sober fashion – always a single landscape photograph with a regular white border on a page. Some illustrations of theatrical works and videos, which Leavitt on occasion staged in his interiors, are given exactly the same treatment, only here short sections of text are added to the facing page. The cinematographic style of presentation pays homage to Leavitt’s explorations of aesthetics and narrative patterns in Hollywood films. The volume’s cohesive design combines five decades of work to retrospectively create what is seemingly a continuous film script. The slightly translucent paper makes reference to the many installations and threshold situations within the interiors.
