Artist:
Jill Magid (born 1973 in Bridgeport, CT, USA; lives and works in New York City, USA).

Materials:
HD video; 4 minutes 58 seconds.

Description:
“Aided by the precise notes Albers left on the back of his paintings which tell of the colours, brands, and condition of each of the paints he used, but thwarted by many of the pigments no longer being in existence, Magid makes her own Homages, forging Albers’ works according to his own instructions. In so doing, she questions the notions of authorship and originality, whilst entering into the relationship between artist and architect. These ‘Homages’ will be shown in the company of ‘Butaca’ chairs which Magid has made through a process of further replication, involving another figure in the exchange of ideas. Butaca are low-sitting sling chairs have existed in Mexico for centuries with different versions existing in different towns. In the ’40s, Cuban-born, Mexican-based designer Clara Porset studied these chairs and reintroduced them with ergonomic changes. Porset worked with Barragán who is also attributed a version of the chair, and was friends with Albers, allowing the latter to trace the dimensions of her chair and reproduce it for every dorm room in Black Mountain College —a version that is attributed to Albers. Furthering the logic of this appropriation, Magid presents her own Butaca chair, made by tracing the contours Albers’ own traced version. Such a tracing can only be inexact, Magid explains, ‘always an attempt at reproduction’, homages rather than forgeries.”
—”Jill Magid: Homage,” RaebervonStenglin website, 2014.

“Magid’s appropriation-based approach may initially come across as a tribute—a literal homage—but she situates this within a larger, far more complicated context: in the ongoing project The Barragán Archives, which she began in 2012, Magid explores the reception of Luis Barragán (1902–88), a pioneer of Mexican modernist architecture… Acting as a fellow player, Magid insinuates herself into spaces where fact blurs with myth, where attribution remains vague and where authorship collides with ownership.”
—Anna Francke, “Review: Jill Magid at RaebervonStenglin,” Frieze, August 23, 2014.