Aspen Art Museum

The fifth edition of the AAM’s Permanent Collection focuses on meaning and “being”: the space in consciousness between stillness and action. Collectively titled, “it came to feel like any other feeling”—a line taken from contributing artist Paul Chan’s visual essay within—the issue also features written essays by artists Renée Green and Jay Heikes, a screenplay by deceased artist Hélio Oiticica, photographic works by Catherine Opie accompanied with an essay by curator/writer Douglas Fogle, and works by the late artist Paul Thek as seen by art historian George Baker. In addition to a beautifully reproduced correspondence between late artists Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse, Permanent Collection V contains German artist Isa Genzken’s record of fellow artist Bruce Nauman’s Instructions for a mental exercise (1973–74), as well as works by groundbreaking authors J.G. Ballard and David Foster Wallace.

Rounding out the issue is an interview with artist Lynda Benglis conducted by AAM Nancy and Bob Magoon CEO and Director Heidi Zuckerman, who, in the issue’s lead-off essay, posits one tenet of why art truly matters: “When we realize that something is not as we thought, the opportunity for transcendence opens up. This possibility—and its always-present counter, impossibility—sanctions the notion that art can…positively change the world.”