Kunsthalle Zürich’s They Printed It! is an ongoing online archive focusing on invitations, press releases and inserts made by artists. These apparently unimportant items are frequently overlooked and carelessly discarded. They are used for announcements and self-marketing, and are sometimes also artworks in their own right. As a space for experiments they enticingly promise to spread art almost unnoticed among the masses. Artists such as Maria Eichhorn, Louise Lawler, Martin Kippenberger, Pierre Leguillon, Jonathan Monk, Albert Oehlen, Michael Riedel and Heimo Zobernig have systematically worked with this medium and made productive use of the contradictions on which it is based.

Conversely, galleries such as Bruno Bischofberger, neugerriemschneider, Matthew Marks, The Modern Institute and institutions such as agnès b., Les Complices*, Low Bet, Message Salon, New Jerseyy, Ringier with their annual reports, the Swiss Institute and Kunsthalle Zürich along with the advertising industry have used similar approaches in their means of communication. In recent years an increasing number of artists have written their own press releases. They use this promotional platform as part of their exhibitions and as an opportunity to reclaim the power of interpretation from gallerists, curators and critics. Thus, we find ourselves in the midst of a broad and dynamic field that has so far received very little attention. Now, as this form of analog social media seems to have receded to the background as a result of progressing digitisation, They Printed It! is also conceived as a cabinet des estampes and a long-overdue homage.