The "Unsigned Untitled Undated" events involve works on canvas from Tim Beeby’s ongoing series Inks – hung on the wall in a conventional manner and/or in stacks of works leant against the wall. Both the hung and stacked works remain unsigned, untitled and undated. Visitors are invited to leaf through the stacks to select a canvas, which they will be able to take away with them, free of charge.
Alternatively, visitors can have their canvases signed, dated and titled by the artist and acquire it at the standard market price. For all signed works being acquired at market price each purchaser will receive a signed and dated certificate of authenticity. In terms of materials used and aesthetic value, the unsigned and signed groups of work remain indistinguishable.
Leaving work unsigned, untitled and undated and making them available free of charge is a simple yet radical gesture, breaking with the western cultural convention of signing works of art before they enter commercial or institutional systems. Even if an unsigned work’s economic or institutional value has been seriously compromised or even completely abrogated, it still retains perhaps its most important value, its aesthetic one, which remains the same as that of its signed counterparts. In art historical terms such a process reverses that of the readymade. Whilst the latter is an everyday object which in being signed by the artist becomes an art object, the unsigned canvas on leaving the spaces of art (the studio, the gallery) becomes just one more object amongst an everyday world of unsigned objects.
The unsigned canvas nevertheless retains something of the aura of a work of art, in that a stretched canvas has but one purpose, that of a support for art, namely painting, differentiating it from all other supports, media and materials used in the production of art or indeed all other objects in the world.
unsigned untitled undated
Berlin
23 - 26 November 2017
Haus 1 | Berlin
Installation view Unsigned Untitled Undated | Haus 1 Berlin | November 2017
Vienna
14 - 17 June 2018
galerie bechter Kastowsky | Vienna
Installation view Unsigned Untitled Undated | galerie bechter kastowsky Vienna | June 2018
Cologne
13 - 16 September 2018
Goltsteinstr. 49 | Cologne
Installation view Unsigned Untitled Undated | Goltsteinstr. 56 Cologne | September 2018
A conceptual exhibition with works on canvas by Tim Beeby
Unsigned Untitled Undated enables visitors to the exhibition to select an unsigned work on canvas to take away with them free of charge. Alternatively, they can have the canvas signed by the artist and acquire it at the standard market price.
unsigned untitled undated
KUNSTFORUM International–Vol. 259
Wolfgang Ullrich: Tim Beeby, your project "Unsigned Untitled Undated" is almost a kind of experiment that is testing the art audience and its reactions to a rather shrewdly conceived scenario commandeering the logic of the art market. Was there a key experience that led you to such a concept? | Read the complete interview >>>
Tim Beeby: "Unsigned isn't a manifesto or a business model, it's allowed to be illogical and contradictory" – A Debate with Wolfgang Ullrich.
In: Paolo Bianchi (ed.). Staunen. Plädoyer für eine existenzielle Erlebensform, published as vol. 259 of Kunstforum International, Cologne 2019, pp. 126–135.
Bibliography – Unsigned Untitled Undated
“Is it the signature that turns a piece of work into art? Galerie Vayhinger based in Singen, Germany, and the artist Tim Beeby have ventured an experiment in Berlin.”
Berlin – A Painting Is A Painting, Siegmund Kopitzki, Südkurier Online, January 12, 2018 Read the complete article >>>
“Even works by renowned contemporary artists are sometimes available for free.
But what value do they actually have if nobody has paid for them?”
These Works are for Free, Gunnar Lützow, DIE ZEIT No. 8/2018, February 15, 2018 Read the complete article >>>
“The concept of 'pay what you want' already exists in many areas, from guided tours to music downloads. But it's above all cafes and restaurants that report positive results. When price recedes, the focus is on value. The absence of a prescribed price means lack of transparency and how it is calculated is no longer an issue. Why hasn't 'pay what you want' been discovered by the art world?”
Tim Beeby Giving Away Work, Paula Watzl, 1010 Wien | Parnass, 6 June 2018
“[...] I do think the art world has long been ready for a "punk rock" moment, in that any critical potential is immediately lost in a situation when works are being exchanged for absurd sums. In order to resist the forces of a hyper-capitalist society it is not enough, as an artist, to make works about current social injustices. Rather, art in and of itself must be political.” (T. Beeby)
Tim Beeby – A Debate with Wolfgang Ullrich, Kunstforum International, Vol. 259, Cologne 2019, pp. 126-135
Read the complete interview >>>
The art critic Heinz Schütz considers Unsigned Untitled Undated in terms of the signature and identity in his introductory essay to the Nov–Dec. 2023 issue of KUNSTFORUM. He situates the project in an art historical context together with such artists as Cindy Sherman and Marcel Duchamp, beginning his hypothesis with Unsigned Untitled Undated as an exemplary contemporary approach.
The Art Turn. Models of Authorship and Constructions of Identity, Heinz Schultz, Kunstforum International vol. 292, Cologne 2023, pp. 46-59
Read an extract in English >>>
Supported by
curated by Marianne Wagner | artist's talk with Tanja Pirsig-Marshall
Tim Beeby, Unsigned Untitled Undated, installation view 14 October 2022, LWL-Museum Münster (Atrium)
Unsigned event on 14 Oct. 2022 at the LWL-Museum Münster, video clip 9:30 min. (no sound)
Unsigned Untitled Undated, the event with members of the public; visitors selecting their canvas and leaving the museum with the works
150 canvases for Münster, studio installation view 2022
Unsigned Untitled Undated: 120 canvases for Munich, studio installation view, February 2023
including an artist's talk with Wolfgang Ullrich
100 canvases for Berlin, studio installation view 2017
Munich
8–12 March 2023
Kunstraum München
Münster
14 October 2022
LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur Münster
Documentation of the artist's talk (in German). For a translation of a previous interview with art historian and theorist Wolfgang Ullrich, published in Kunstforum in March 2019, see >>>