The Riso Book: Portland
Modou Dieng, Bean Gilsdorf, Anna Gray / Ryan Paulsen, Lisa Radon, Blair Saxon-Hill
July 20th - July 26th

Opening Reception
Publication Studio
717 SW Ankeny St, Portland, OR 97205
July 26th, 6-8 PM

Colpa, in collaboration with Publication Studio Portland presents The Riso Book: Portland, 
the fourth installment of a traveling publication project and exhibition between Los Angeles, Marfa, San Francisco, New York, and Portland.The series standardizes the conditions of production underlying artist publications and presents the book as exhibition.

The Riso Book, inspired by the format of Seth Siegelaub and Jack Wendler's 1968 Xerox Book, is a geographic survey of contemporary artists with similar practices across several cities. In Portland, 5 artists will work over the course of five days at Publication Studio, using the Risograph as a tool. Each artist is given 20 pages within the monochromatic 8.5 x 11 inch book. All 100 pages will be bound into a single publication in an edition of 100, to be presented for sale at Publication Studio on Saturday, July 26th from 6-8pm. 

Originally created on a Xerox machine and duplicated through a lithographic process, The Xerox Book afforded each artist twenty-five pages, plus a cover / title page, to execute a site specific project for the publication. The artists included were Carl Andre, Robert Barry, Douglas Huebler, Joseph Kosuth, Sol LeWitt, Robert Morris and Lawrence Weiner. The publication itself functioned as the exhibition rather than a documentation of these site specific projects.

The Riso Book takes its name from the Risograph, a printer/duplicator manufactured in Japan. The original is scanned through the machine and a master is created, by means of tiny heat spots on a thermal plate burning voids (corresponding to image areas) in a master sheet. This master is then wrapped around a drum and ink is forced through the voids in the master. Because the Risograph uses real ink rather than toner, each image looks hand-made.