By Alison Knowles: A Retrospective (1960–2022)

Review\nThough technically monographic, 'by Alison Knowles' necessarily convenes an entire Fluxus ensemble. Isolating Knowles from Higgins, Williams, George Brecht, Philip Corner, Shigeko Kubota, George Maciunas, Benjamin Patterson, Nam June Paik, Takako Saito, Mieko Shiomi, and the omnipresent John Cage is like extracting the glue from a collage. In my experience, the best Fluxus exhibitions avoid grasping at epistemologically slippery questions about what Fluxus was and instead explore what Fluxus can still do. -- Colby Chamberlain ― Artforum\nBy Alison Knowles smartly pushes the exhibition catalogue towards the form of artists’ book, a fitting push for the work of such a seminal figure in the field. -- Megan N. Liberty ― Brooklyn Rail\nThe first survey of the Fluxus cofounder’s prolific avant-garde output, from eight-foot-tall books to make-a-salad performances
The American artist Alison Knowles’ (born 1933) groundbreaking experiments―from painting and printmaking to sculpture and installation, sound works, poetry and artist’s books―have influenced art and artists for more than 50 years but remain relatively unknown among mainstream audiences. The first comprehensive volume on the artist, By Alison Knowles: A Retrospective presents more than 200 objects that span the entire breadth of her career, from her intermedia works of the 1960s to forms of participatory and relational art in the 2000s.
The accompanying catalog features contributions by international Fluxus curators, historians and scholars, including lead essays by organizer Karen Moss, Hannah B. Higgins and Nicole Woods, and short contributions by co-editor Lucia Fabio, Lauren Fulton, Maud Jacquin and Sébastien Pluot. It also includes reprints of key articles by Benjamin Buchloh, Julia Robinson and Kristine Stiles, as well as a conversation between Alison Knowles and poet George Quasha. Richly illustrated with more than 250 images, the full-color catalog, designed by Kimberly Varella, includes a softcover lay-flat binding, special colored papers for each section, die-cut section dividers and a chronology. The cover of the book is a makeready (press sheets gathered from printing the interior of the book) produced during the printing of the interior pages. Each cover in the edition is unique.