September 1 - November 15, 2017

LIV FÈ CHANM BÈL BY LAWRENCE WEINER

EXILE Books is pleased to announce our inaugural exhibition,  LIV FÈ CHANM BÈL by the world renowned conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner. To celebrate EXILE’s settling into its new Little Haiti home as well as the neighborhood’s vibrant culture, Weiner has recreated our BOOKS DO FURNISH A ROOM wall piece in Haiti’s native Creole. In partnership with the Sackner Archive of Concrete & Visual Poetry, this site-specific work is accompanied by a display of Weiner’s artist’s books, exhibition catalogs, posters, postcards & other ephemera dating from 1960’s to the now.

EXILE Books serves as a collaborative cultural platform that seeks to represent our diverse community through contemporary artist’s books, zines and their publishers. Through its public programs, EXILE not only educates South Florida about small press and literary arts, but also actively demonstrates the history of artists who have engaged with publishing as a medium. In this spirit, LIV FÈ CHANM BÈL marks the beginning of a series of rotating exhibitions that will highlight a variety of printed matter from the Sackner Archive. LIV FÈ CHANM BÈL is the first work Weiner has executed in Creole, and we are thrilled it launches this dynamic collaboration; further demonstrating that language is indeed a material and can function alone as a work of art, echoing the energy of Little Haiti.

About Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner’s texts have appeared in all sorts of places over the last five decades and although he sees himself as a sculptor rather than a conceptualist, he is among the trailblazers of the 1960s to present art as language. Lawrence Weiner was born in New York in 1942 and lives and works in New York. Solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Bregenz, Bregenz, Austria (2016), Regen Projects, Los Angeles, USA (2016), Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, UK (2015), Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2014), Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, Spain (2013), Haus der Kunst, Munich, Germany (2007), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, USA (2007); Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City, Mexico (2004), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2000), Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, USA (1994) and Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, USA (1990). He participated in documenta 5, 6, 7, and 13 (1972, 1977, 1982, 2012), the 36th, 41st, 50th and 55th Venice Biennales, Italy (1972, 1984, 2003, 2013) and the 27th Biennale de Sao Paulo, Brazil (2006). Among many honours he was awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1976, 1983), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1994), the Wolfgang Hahn Prize, Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1995), a Skowhegan Medal for Painting/Conceptual Art (1999) and an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the Graduate Center, City University of New York (2013).

Downloadable press release.