signs and symbols

Rachael Catharine Anderson
Rachael Catharine Anderson: Paintings, 2024
Published by signs and symbols, New York
Texts by Barry Schwabsky and Dr. Kathy Battista
Hardcover, linen bound with embossed gold foil
Printed by Edition One
9.25 x 6.75 inches, 112 pages
Limited, Numbered Edition of 100
ISBN 979-8-218-43878-4

$ 55

Published by signs and symbols, Rachael Catharine Anderson: Paintings is the first monograph of the artist and offers a comprehensive overview of her seasonal modes of practice: painting en plein air during summer and painting still lifes in her studio during winter. Anderson’s thematic representations of plants and ephemera challenge Western colonial conceptions of control over nature, raising urgent ontological questions about the coexistence of humans with the biosphere. Where Anderson diverges from traditional landscape and still life painting is her tender consideration for things often overlooked—particularly the world of plants.

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $20; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Annabel Daou
Possibilities of Repair, 2025
Published by Distanz Verlag, Berlin
Softcover
10.75 x 8.25 inches, 152 pages
ISBN 978-3-95476-763-2

Possibilities of Repair provides an overview of Annabel Daou's work from the last two decades of her practice and is complemented by essays by Amanda Abi Khalil, David Markus, Ana Teixeira Pinto, Kathryn S. Poots, Elliot Josephine Leila Reichert, and a conversation between Rania Jaber and the artist.

To purchase a copy, please contact the gallery at info@signsandsymbols.art.

Adam Broomberg + CAConrad + Gersande Spelsberg
Glitter in My Wounds, 2021
Published by MACK Books, London
Language: English
Hardcover
10 x 8.25 inches (25 x 20 cm), 72 pages

$ 50

The result of a series of chance encounters, Glitter in My Wounds embraces accident and improvisation in the face of the restrictive categories that pervade art and life. The book is shaped around a series of portraits of the transgender activist and actress Gersande Spelsberg made by the artist and educator Adam Broomberg. Spelsberg sat for Broomberg and together they made 100 photographs, shot on 5”x4” negative and lit only using the sun and mirrors – the same distinctive lighting technique employed in Helmar Lerski’s remarkable series ‘Metamorphosis Through Light’.

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $20; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Annabel Daou
in collaboration with Fawz Kabra and Gabriel Cyr
A LIVE DECLARATION, 2020
10” vinyl album, RT 24:00
Recorded live on February 2, 2020 at signs and symbols
Edition of 50, +4 AP

$ 150

The album A LIVE DECLARATION is the outcome of the event, by the same name, curated by Fawz Kabra, recorded and remixed by Gabriel Cyr, and including the voices of the people of New York. This two hour event was organized in conjunction with Annabel Daou’s exhibition, WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTSat signs and symbols (January 10 - February 9, 2020).

A Live Declaration was performed on February 2, 2020, from 4-6pm at signs and symbols. Visitors to  the gallery were invited to lend their voice, reading excerpts from Daou’s work on paper WHEN IN THE COURSE OF HUMAN EVENTS, a scroll-like undulation that re-appropriates the opening line of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence. The phrases in the work include everyday expressions interspersed with lines borrowed, stolen or gifted by artists, poets, writers and activists. Cumulatively, they are an expression of urgency in the face of global quakes and minor disturbances. During the event, visitors read what moved them, their voice—hushed in a whisper or traveling out in the space—was recorded and then remixed with musical interventions by Cyr in real time.

This limited edition vinyl features original cover art by Daou and liner notes by Kabra. It is released exclusively as one of signs and symbols’ special initiatives that will allow us to support our program and our artists who continue creating work during this turbulent time.

A LIVE DECLARATION is published in a special edition of 50; for every 10 vinyls in this edition, there is a different cover image based on a unique artwork by Annabel Daou. There is an option to collect all 5 covers.

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $35; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Zander Blom
The Garage-ism Manifesto, 2020
Published by the artist
Riso-printed and bound by Dream Press, Cape Town
Softcover, 32 pages

$ 12

Zander Blom’s self-published artist book, The Garage-ism Manifesto, accompanies his latest body of work as well as his 2021 solo exhibition at signs and symbols, Garage Party. As the artist writes, “Garage-ism is an approach to painting in which the aim is to make works that look like they could have emerged from a garage; works that appear to have lived and spent time behind boxes and stacks of old furniture. It’s not faux garage, it’s not about sticking cobwebs or dust onto canvas, and it’s not about nostalgia. Nor is it about paintings being made in a garage. It’s about working in a mental space where the desired destination for your efforts is neither the trash heap nor the museum. It’s about cultivating paintings that seem to have no desire to grace a pristine gallery wall, or even reside above a couch in a lounge. It’s about aiming to make work that is only really fit to live in that nether space: the garage.”

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $15; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Annabel Daou
RESOLUTION (Print), 2020
Digital print
24 x 18 inches (60.96 x 45.72 cm)
Edition of 20, + 1 AP
Signed

$ 150 unframed

RESOLUTION (Print) is an editioned digital print based on Daou’s drawing of the same name, RESOLUTION (2020). Each phrase completes the prompt “When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary to,” which is the opening line of the American Declaration of Independence. RESOLUTION articulates the pivotal moment when we are moved to act.

Shipping for this work must be coordinated directly with the gallery following payment; shipping costs will be billed to the client separately. For international shipping, please inquire. The gallery is not liable for third party shippers. All sales are final.

Annabel Daou
That was then, this is now, 2021
Ink on hand dyed microfiber paper, with unique hand embellishments
4 x 6 inches (10.16 x 15.24)
Edition of 20

The title of our inaugural exhibition at our new location, which was in turn inspired by the title of a recent work by Annabel Daou, this edition invites reflection on the connections and contrasts between the past and the present — both the expected and unexpected, the welcome and unwelcome changes — a particularly timely exercise as we approach a new year in a very strange era.

This work is available for pick at the gallery or domestic shipping for $35; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Ornella Fieres
The Alchemist, 2018
Print on embossed handmade paper in a wooden frame
11.81 x 8.27 inches (30 x 21 cm)
Edition of 3, +1 AP

$ 710 framed

Developed while in residence at New Lab in Brooklyn, Ornella Fieres’s first US solo exhibition at signs and symbols The Structure and Function of hidden Things questioned notions of appearance and time. An artist and photographer as well as a researcher and a scientist, Fieres explores the boundaries and transitions between digital and analogue space in her various bodies of work across media. In this poetry series, Fieres places film stills alongside text on hand-made paper. The texts are composed of transcribed fragments from the off-voices of documentary films produced in the mid-1900s.

Shipping for this work must be coordinated directly with the gallery following payment; shipping costs will be billed to the client separately. For international shipping, please inquire. The gallery is not liable for third party shippers. All sales are final.

Matty Davis & Ben Gould
Carriage, 2017
Digital print
11 x 8.5 inches (27.94 x 21.59 cm)
Edition of 15, +2 AP

$ 150 unframed

Carriage is an ongoing, site-responsive performance that radically explores control and empathy. Emerging from new, evolving conditions of their bodies, Matty Davis and Ben Gould engage physicalized forms of resistance and balance that confound care, provocation and necessity. In November 2016, Gould underwent jaw surgery to treat complications brought on by his Tourette Syndrome. In January 2017, Davis had an accident in which a table saw cut into four of his five fingers, necessitating a partial amputation of one, wires and a bone fusion in two, and a bone graft in another. In Davis and Gould’s different physicalities, and the transformations they have undergone and are responding to, the artists have found a unique opportunity to create work in which empathy can be a physical tool and resistance offers stability.

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $25; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Michelle Handelman
Irma Vep, The Last Breath (Poster), 2013
Digital print on poster paper
24 x 18 inches (60.96 x 45.72 cm)
Signed edition of 50

$ 55 unframed

This signed, editioned poster stems from Handelman’s 2013 multichannel video project Irma Vep, The Last Breath based on Musidora, the French silent film actress, and the character she is best known for, Irma Vep from the film Les Vampires (dir. Louis Feuillade 1915). Handelman explores living in the shadows, criminal anxiety and the relationship between the artist and her creation, both fictional and real. Irma Vep and Musidora are played by Zackary Drucker and Flawless Sabrina, two artists whose identities transgress the border of art and life. Together they have developed a relationship that documents a cultural evolution of gender. Musidora was an early 20th century feminist who took control of her career, not only acting, but also producing/directing films and theater. She was an artistic force of her time, producing several works by her lover Colette and having many documented affairs with both men and women. After financing dried up for her projects she lived in relative obscurity until her death in Paris in 1957.

Irma Vep, The Last Breath takes up motifs from the silent movie Les Vampires such as gazes, affected body language and the figure of the masked woman. It is shot on a starkly illuminated set that makes space for anxious projections of desire on the void that is Irma Vep — a space between genders, between vamps of the silent era and the contemporary queer — smashing the shiny veneer to reveal dark, subconscious layers of fluid identity.

Shipping for this work must be coordinated directly with the gallery following payment; shipping costs will be billed to the client separately. For international shipping, please inquire. The gallery is not liable for third party shippers. All sales are final.

Michelle Handelman
Untitled from Irma Vep, The Last Breath, 2013/2021
Digital C-print
Image size: 9 x 10 7/8  inches (22.86 x 27.62 cm); Paper size: 11 x 13 inches (27.94 x 33.02 cm)
Edition of 20

$ 300 unframed

This limited editioned print originates from Handelman’s 2013 multichannel video project Irma Vep, The Last Breath based on Musidora, the French silent film actress, and the character she is best known for, Irma Vep from the film Les Vampires (dir. Louis Feuillade 1915). Handelman explores living in the shadows, criminal anxiety and the relationship between the artist and her creation, both fictional and real. Irma Vep and Musidora are played by Zackary Drucker and Flawless Sabrina, two artists whose identities transgress the border of art and life. Together they have developed a relationship that documents a cultural evolution of gender. Musidora was an early 20th century feminist who took control of her career, not only acting, but also producing/directing films and theater. She was an artistic force of her time, producing several works by her lover Colette and having many documented affairs with both men and women. After financing dried up for her projects she lived in relative obscurity until her death in Paris in 1957.

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $35; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Michelle Handelman
Hustlers & Empires, 2020
Set of 20 archival prints
19 x 13 inches (48.26 x 33.02 cm)
Edition of 5, +1 AP 

$ 1300 unframed, in archival box

Made in collaboration with the Rauschenberg Foundation Residency in Captiva, Florida in early 2020, this special edition of 20 archival prints revisits Handelman’s recent feature-length, multichannel video project Hustlers & Empires (2018). Originally commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Hustlers & Empires explores transgression as a mode of survival, examining the complicated relationship between pleasure and risk and how identity is formed in resistance to oppression. Part opera, part manifesto, the project draws on Handelman’s own experience of growing up among drug dealers and pimps during the 1970s, as well as the stories of three real and imagined hustlers: Iceberg Slim's Pimp (1967), Marguerite Duras's The Lover (1984) and Federico Fellini's Toby Dammit (1968).

Shipping for this work must be coordinated directly with the gallery following payment; shipping costs will be billed to the client separately. For international shipping, please inquire. The gallery is not liable for third party shippers. All sales are final.

Rachel Libeskind
Athenian Salt Tabloid, 2020
Inkjet on newsprint with unique hand embellishments in oil pen
15 x 11 inches (38.1 x 27.94 cm)
Edition of 35

$ 155

This edition of 35 artist printed tabloids accompanies Libeskind’s solo exhibition Athenian Salt at the gallery. Each is uniquely individualized with a silkscreen of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 59 and/or an overlay drawing by the artist. Featured inside are images of her new series of collages — anti-conceptual demontages of ineffable elements, appropriating art historical imagery along with images of women sourced from Playboy magazine.

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $35; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Rachel Libeskind
The good man, skilled in speaking, 2023
Risograph on paper
16.5 x 11.7 inches (42 x 29.7 cm)
Edition of 20, +5 AP

$ 105

This special edition print by Rachel Libeskind is a response to Jenny Holzer's 1979–1982 text Untitled (A Real Torture Would…), from Inflammatory Essays, which also serves as the inspiration for signs and symbols’ group exhibition THE DELICATE THINGS THAT GIRLS DO — a consideration of what it means to be a woman, an artist and both at the same time.

Shipping for this work must be coordinated directly with the gallery following payment; shipping costs will be billed to the client separately. For international shipping, please inquire. The gallery is not liable for third party shippers. All sales are final.

Rachel Libeskind
hand scan, 2020
Digital image file
Edition of 50

$ 50

“How much can happen in your hand.
How much can happen with your hand.
Our hands are just architecture for complex bacteria empires.
What useful instruments, even our nails seem to have a divine purpose.”
- Rachel Libeskind

hand scan exists purely in the digital realm — you can use it as a screensaver on your phone or computer. You may also translate it into the physical realm by printing at your own discretion (the file is formatted to be printed at 8.5 x 11 inches). You will receive a high resolution jpg file of Libeskind’s digital artwork along with a certificate of authenticity for your edition.

We know that, in these uncertain times, many of our clients and supporters cannot commit to collecting artworks. Others simply don’t have remaining wall space. At the same time, every dollar contributes to maintaining our exhibition and performance space for our artists post-coronavirus. This digital edition is one of our special initiatives that will allow us to support our program and our artists during this time.

Domestic and international shipping do not apply for this artwork. All sales are final.

Tony Orrico
Textile: Remembering Others, 2020
Performance and graphite on paper
5 x 7 inches (12.7 x 17.78 cm)
Unique, in a special edition series of 50 drawings

Tony Orrico will perform a unique graphite drawing for you, based on your own performative participation — we believe that we can foster connection even when we cannot gather together.

Artist’s Instructions
1. Lie on your back and calm your thoughts.
2. Connect to what is felt in your body.
3. Begin to scan slowly from head to toe navigating the feeling of all of the contours of your body.
4. Allow your mind to begin to think fluidly through stories and associations- past, present, and future.
5. Collect 7 memories like eggs in a basket. Notice where you are on the body when a memory arises. When a full story is remembered, deduce it down to a word, pair of words, or a very short phrase. While gathering several stories, you may recognize when one of them is lost again, and if not recovered, gather a new one in its place. Don’t be precious.
6. Take your time. Your performance is finished when you have 7 and can recite them forward and backward.
7.  Write them down and email them to info@signsandsymbols.art and the artist will sew your unique, hand written tessellation of these memories, a virtual splice of a mental connectome carried in your body.

Example list:
SELF THREAT
BLUEBERRY BOUNTY
REVOLT AGAINST THE CITY
SOCIAL DISTANCE
FEED ME MY LINES
FEELS LIKE NOT FALLING
SHOW YOURSELF

This participatory performative drawing is one of our special initiatives that will allow us to support our program and our artists who are trying to continue creating work during this turbulent time.

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $35; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Carol Szymanski
Acquiescence, 2013
Published by Lost Soul Editions, New York
Edition of 30
Signed

$ 250

Acquiescence is an artist book by Carol Szymanski published by Lost Soul Editions, New York. A rumination in images and text on the interplay of power and gender in corporate life, the material was inspired by the artist’s own experience working in the male-dominated financial industry. The book cover is an editioned, lithographic print and can be framed.

“That was a work that was very close to me because as a woman I feel frankly that I’ve been acquiescing for many, many, many years in my life. And it was always something that has bothered me a lot and I was trying to get to understand why it was the case,” Szymanski explained in an interview with Brooklyn Rail in November 2019, during her solo exhibition He Said I Thought at signs and symbols which was based on and inspired by this book project.

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $25; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

Carol Szymanski & Barry Schwabsky with John Yau
Emergency Eyewash Patches, 2017
4 fabric patches
Bee Wear: 4.5 x 5 inches (11.43 x 12.7 cm); Disguise: 10 x 6 inches (25.4 x 15.24 cm); Poor Cue Pine: 5 x 6 inches ( 12.7 x cm); Say Crud: 4.25 x 4.25 (10.8 x 10.8 cm)
Edition of 18

$ 80 each
$ 300 set of 4

Carol Szymanski and Barry Schwabsky created the conceptual brand “Emergency Eyewash” to pursue creative collaborations across different fields in the form of wearable objects. Together, the patches form a poem by John Yau, extending the presence of poetry by bringing it out into new environments and surprising contexts rather than the printed pages where it usually found.

Please note that the patches come loose, as individually photographed. Special thanks to Siv Stoldal, who designed the jacket featured in the images.

This work is available for pickup at the gallery or domestic shipping for $25; the gallery is not liable for third party shippers. For international shipping, please inquire. All sales are final.

ULAY
Elf, 1974-75
Black and white C-print after original Auto-Polaroid (type 107, 8.5 x 10.8 cm)
8.5 x 11 inches (21.59 x 27.94 cm)
Edition of 20, +5 AP

$ 350 (Edition 1 - 10)
$ 450 (Edition 11 - 20)

This special edition print by ULAY is released exclusively by signs and symbols in collaboration with the ULAY Foundation in memory of the artist. This joint effort is one of our special initiatives to support the gallery's activities, the Ulay Foundation’s project space and residency in Ljubljana and Piran (Slovenia), and The Bowery Mission during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the early period of his artistic activity between 1968 and 1976, the German-born performance artist ULAY undertook a thematic search for understandings of the notions of identity and the body on both the personal and communal levels. Through series of aphorisms, Polaroid photographs, and intimate performances, he introduced the term performative photography. “As soon as I began using the Polaroid camera, mainly pointing it at myself – a practice I called Auto-Polaroid – I immediately discovered its performative elements. Taking Polaroids was a performative act for me: I performed in front of the camera. These were intimate actions, carried out in the absence of a live audience, ephemeral in nature, yet arrested in time through the Polaroid.” Taking hundreds of self-portraits, each manipulated in a myriad of ways, ULAY developed an approach that was novel in both method and subject matter, using the camera as a tool to investigate and modify identity, whilst exploring socially constructed issues of gender.

By acquiring this special edition print, you will help support our curatorial vision and commitment to performance and time-based media. The edition is conceived as a benefit fundraiser, with 10% of proceeds donated to The Bowery Mission in memory of ULAY who worked with the mission in the 90’s.

© the artist, courtesy of ULAY Foundation

Shipping for this work must be coordinated directly with the gallery following payment; shipping costs will be billed to the client separately. For international shipping, please inquire. The gallery is not liable for third party shippers. All sales are final.

ULAY
Soliloquy (from the series Renais sense), 1975
Black and white C-print after original Auto-Polaroid (type 107, 8.5 x 10.8 cm)
12 x 15 inches (30.48 x 38.1 cm)
Edition of 20,+ 5 AP
$ 600 (Edition 1 - 10); $ 750 (Edition 11 - 20)

This special edition print by ULAY is released exclusively by signs and symbols in collaboration with the ULAY Foundation in memory of the artist. This joint effort is one of our special initiatives to support the gallery's activities, the Ulay Foundation’s project space and residency in Ljubljana and Piran (Slovenia), and The Bowery Mission during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the early period of his artistic activity between 1968 and 1976, the German-born performance artist ULAY undertook a thematic search for understandings of the notions of identity and the body on both the personal and communal levels. Through series of aphorisms, Polaroid photographs, and intimate performances, he introduced the term performative photography. “As soon as I began using the Polaroid camera, mainly pointing it at myself – a practice I called Auto-Polaroid – I immediately discovered its performative elements. Taking Polaroids was a performative act for me: I performed in front of the camera. These were intimate actions, carried out in the absence of a live audience, ephemeral in nature, yet arrested in time through the Polaroid.” Taking hundreds of self-portraits, each manipulated in a myriad of ways, ULAY developed an approach that was novel in both method and subject matter, using the camera as a tool to investigate and modify identity, whilst exploring socially constructed issues of gender.

By acquiring this special edition print, you will help support our curatorial vision and commitment to performance and time-based media. The edition is conceived as a benefit fundraiser, with 10% of proceeds donated to The Bowery Mission in memory of ULAY who worked with the mission in the 90’s.

© the artist, courtesy of ULAY Foundation

Shipping for this work must be coordinated directly with the gallery following payment. For international shipping, please inquire. The gallery is not liable for third party shippers. All sales are final.