Alan Vega - Infinite Mercy

Published in May 2010 to mark Alan’s only ever museum show, at Lyon MOCA 15th May to 2nd August 2009, this was the first monograph devoted to the visual work of the mythical New York figure, offering an overview of a radical and uncompromising artistic career spanning over 40 years. These are the last remaining copies of this highly-collectible work.

It opens by reproducing in its entirety the famous magazine Art Rite # 13, published by Vega in 1977, and concludes with a previously unpublished work of 16 pages. It gathers a long interview with Alan Vega and contributions from and discussions with, among others, Edit Deak, Martin Rev, Ric Ocasek, Marc Hurtado, Philippe Grandrieux and Henry Rollins. It also includes colour shots of the Lyon exhibition itself, which few outside of France ever saw.

Alan Vega (1938-2016), one of the pioneers of minimalist electronic rock as the co-founder with Martin Rev of the mythical band Suicide, was first and foremost a visual artist active on the New York scene from the end of the 1960s until his death in 2016.

Vega founded “Project of Living Artists”, one of the first alternative artist-run spaces in NY, which was open 24/7 and dedicated to all forms of art, music and cinema. It quickly became a showcase for groups such as the New York Dolls, Television and Blondie.

In this saturated universe, Vega found an ideal environment for his work, and pursued his musical and artistic careers in parallel. He studied with Ad Reinhardt at Brooklyn College, initially focusing on painting. Toward the end of the 1960s, his interests shifted toward light as he created his first “Light Pieces”— assemblages of diverse objects including bulbs, wires, televisions and neon tubes of every shape and colour. Anti-aesthetic, anti-formal, Vega's work embraced the contemporary reality in which he was immersed.

In collaboration with our friends at Blast First Petite, we have a very limited number of these books available at the Strange Attractor shoppe.

https://strangeattractor.greedbag.com/buy/alan-vega-infinite-mercy/