A selection of rare and out of print books to complement Swiss Institute’s new exhibition, Rosemary Mayer: Ways of Attaching, the first institutional survey of the artist’s work. The books here reflect Mayer’s connections to experimental writing and land art.

Mayer, born in Brooklyn, was a part of the many avant-garde movements—conceptual art, language art and concrete poetry, DIY publishing, to name a few—emanating from Downtown NYC in the late 1960s through 1980s. Her sister, Bernadette Mayer, and husband, Vito Acconci, were editors of 0 to 9, an artist periodical dedicated to experimental artist poetry and writing, and Rosemary herself created an entire issue of Art-Rite (the artist magazine edited by Walter Robinson and Edit DeAk, two of Printed Matter’s founders).

In addition to her fabric sculptures, Rosemary Mayer began to create, in the late 1970s, durational sculptures and installations that she referred to as “temporary monuments.” Made with weather balloons, snow, and foam, Mayer’s pieces had an ephemeral quality shared by most works of land art, based as they are in shifting seasons and other natural cycles.

Two issues of 0 to 9 and Mayer’s issue of Art-Rite are featured in the top left corner of the table.