Multiples

OSCAAR MOULIGNE is pleased to announce the exhibition Multiples, on view from March 16 until April 27, 2024.

This exhibition will focus on the notion of the artist’s multiple and its constantly challenged definition across various mediums, movements, and artistic practices. A number of selected works will be brought together to explore different ways in which artists have worked with and interpreted the idea of a work of art intended to exist in a quantity greater than one—or multiplicity. Works shown in the exhibition include those by: Richard Artschwager, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Dan Flavin, Jack Goldstein, Wade Guyton, Andy Hope 1930, Glenn Ligon, and Gordon Matta-Clark.

The exhibition will also feature works produced by Multiples Inc., an art publishing company established in 1965 by a group of five partners including Marian Goodman who afterwards founded the eponymous gallery in New York in 1977. During its existence, Multiples, Inc. published groundbreaking multiples and editions over a period of almost three decades between 1966 and 1992, with many significant artists of the 20th century such as Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, and Robert Rauschenberg. These multiples and editions, which often incorporated the use of new material and contemporary manufacturing techniques, “allowed a democracy of distribution” and were pivotal in paving the way for works of art to be further accessible and in reaching new audiences.

Taking inspiration from the history of Multiples Inc. as well as its influence and trajectory leading up to today, OSCAAR MOULIGNE has co-published with twelvebooks a Japanese translated edition of a catalogue produced by Marian Goodman Gallery on the occasion of a 2021 exhibition in New York, which was comprised of a historically complete list of all the Multiples, Inc. editions; a selection of over 150 editions published by Multiples, Inc. in collaboration with over 70 artists; and archival documents illustrating the history of the company.

The range of works presented in the exhibition Multiples, from silkscreen prints to sculptural objects to sound installation—as well as the ways in which they have been produced and circulated by various arts organizations, museums, publishers, and galleries—demonstrates how multiples can encapsulate the ideas intricately threading through an artist’s entire oeuvre while also embodying an individual uniqueness informed by a spirit of accessibility and the idea of “many.”

“One is unique, two are a couple, and three approaches many.”
– Marcel Duchamp