Tod Lippy: Private

An irreverent artist’s book on the exclusivity of commercial art galleries

Art books generally depict pieces of art, and art is generally shown in galleries. For his new artist's book, Tod Lippy (born 1963), founder of the nonprofit arts publication ESOPUS, flips the script. Private displays photographs of art galleries that Lippy has taken over the past several years. Crucially, these photographs are not of the art housed in said galleries but of the areas that are marked off-limits to visitors. These areas are indeed private, and the book’s title ripples throughout the 66-page volume to incantatory effect. Without trespassing, Lippy gestures toward the banal, if not insidious, forces behind the artworks on display: commerce and bureaucracy. His cropped photographs strip the galleries of identifying information, coalescing into an expanse of gatekeeping white space. After the procession of images, Ed Park, author of Same Bed, Different Dreams (2023), concludes the volume with a stream-of-consciousness-style afterword.