Philippe Parreno: Fade to Black

Fade to Black is the series title for a group of projects organized or "triggered" by conceptual artist Philippe Parreno over the last 10 years. Parreno is the initiator, but has sometimes pursued his work in collaboration with colleagues such as Rirkrit Tiravanija (with whom he animated ventriloquists dummies) or Liam Gillick (with whom he hung a fictional commercial banner along the highway in Bangkok). Fade to Black gathers 11 titled images of those projects, each photograph testimony to an action or ephemeral installation, and offers the images in glow-in-the-dark ink that must be exposed to light before it can be seen--and allowed to fade away again--in the dark. Fade to Black therefore exists without being visible until the viewer makes it so, and then only for a brief predetermined window: an ideal product for an artist who enjoys using time as a material. Each ghostly image in this unique, large-format, limited-edition artist's book is bound as a detachable print.