David Osbaldeston: By disappointment only

By James Westcott

An invitation landed in my inbox offering appointments to see David Osbaldeston's new exhibition at Matt's Gallery. There was a special number to call or email address to use. I like art that you have to make an appointment for. The invitation said nothing about what the exhibition – or encounter? – was going to be. I thought it might be to see Osbaldeston in the process of making something – his last show at Matt's, Your Answer is Mine (2006), featured a billboard-sized plate with hundreds of tiny and semi-meaningless slogans laboriously etched onto it.

Anyway, the commitment of a 1pm mystery appointment accelerated my pace as I cycled by the frozen Regent's Canal on my way to the gallery. The exhibition has its own buzzer…


Visitors must press the right buzzer. Photos: James Westcott

…and I was greeted by gallerist Robin Klassnik, who quickly ushered me into the office and said: "You've come at an appropriate moment: I'm just opening my mail – all these invitations..." I had no idea what this meant and wondered if it was part of a script directed by Osbaldeston from afar (he wasn't there after all). Nu-uh. Klassnik said "Well, this is it", and opened a large cupboard to reveal 12 etchings framed and arranged in a neat grid on the inside of the doors and fixed on rungs in front of the folders, blank CDs, petty cash box etc.


Matt's Gallery office

The etchings are of the backs of exhibition invitation cards, all of them from 2007, which the artist took from Klassnik's collection. They're all done freehand so despite the different fonts and identities of the galleries, everything comes out in Osbaldeston's loving and attentive hand, which renders the text in warm, wobbly soft focus. The etchings are like fossils of something fleeting – just more exhibitions in the artworld churn, mostly forgotten about less than a year on: Christian Marclay at Michel Benan, Alexandre Perigot at Tramway, Peter Hujar at the ICA…

The dynamic seems to be between the throwaway nature of these exhibition announcements – and by extension the exhibitions themselves? – and Osbaldeston's care in etching them into history. But the pathos in this dynamic soon turns scathing and depressing when you think about it: the etchings are pointlessly and laborious done to preserve something lamentably forgettable. They're not redemptive (though that would be sinfully Romantic anyway) so much as dismissive. Osbaldeston has said of his deliberately anachronistic techniques (which include woodcutting to): "To me it makes the unnecessary nature of art necessary as a counterpoint to the 'readymade' culture in which we inhabit." I'm all for the unnecessary, but can it be for something less picayune and solipsistic than exhibition announcements? Aren't there more important unnecessary things than the detritus of the gallery system?

Osbaldeston chose the invitations according to a simple numerical system: the first exhibition in the grid opened on the first of a month, the next opened on the second of a month, and so on through to the twelfth. Like the precise etching style, this system at first seems appealing, affable even. It immediately strikes a chord. But then, as with the etchings, a kind of negation and nihilism emerges that is only saved from cynicism by its triviality. The exhibition-in-a-cupboard gains nothing from this numerology except for some tenuous and nostalgic connection to the systematic (but still arbitrary) conceptualism of, say, Hannah Darboven.


Osbaldeston's etchings are in this cupboard; photographs of them aren't allowed

The best thing about the exhibition is its semi-secretive and performative nature: I wasn't allowed to take photos of the etchings; you have to make the commitment of an appointment in order to see them. It's a mini mystery adventure, and as well as getting to enjoy the surface beauty and skill of the etchings, you get to see the engine room of the gallery and have a nice chat with the staff. Afterwards you sign your name on the whiteboard-guestbook on the front of the cupboard. All this is far more interesting and pleasurable than being drawn into Osbaldeston's interminably dry and yet still dainty theoretical framework. Osbaldeston has in fact created an exhibition structure that will linger in the memory much longer than the shows he miserably eulogises in his etchings, but it's unclear whether he takes any pleasure doing so.


The whiteboard guestbook