The weekend of the Mouth Open Teeth Showing opening was a social whirl, as guests from points north (Vancouver), south (San Francisco and Los Angeles), and east (New York) converged on Seattle in various configurations. It was swell seeing Doug Aitken, Jeremy Shaw, Mari Spirito from 303 Gallery, Tracey and Chris from Tracey Lawrence Gallery, and Chris Perez from Ratio 3, but I still was a little sad not to be able to spend time with Zoe Leonard, who was absent for really good reasons. This summer brought the completion of a project she’s been working on since before the first time we showed Mouth open, teeth showing (I) in Seattle, at Western Bridge, in our first exhibition in the distant past of spring, 2004. She had then already some six years of work behind her on a large photographic series, Analogue, which was to debut soon at the Wexner. She was able to fly out from her residency in Columbus for the installation at Western Bridge, which was very lucky for us, as the piece had to be rearranged to suit our large gallery.
Three years later, Analogue is finally public, and not just at the Wexner. A month after its opening in Columbus it debuted as part of Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. The 350 or so piece photographic essay traces retail capitalism across several continents, from the decaying storefronts of New York’s Lower East Side to the spread of Coca-Cola distribution across the undeveloped stretches of Uganda. I’ll see it in August, and I’m thrilled for her.
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