Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego to Open New Tim Youd Exhibition on 5/17

Artist Tim Youd, as part of his ongoing critically acclaimed undertaking to retype 100 classic novels, will be retyping all seven of Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe novels. Through Marlowe, the quintessential hard boiled detective, Chandler both defined and transcended the detective fiction genre. Youd's Chandler Cycle will culminate in a solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (MCASD) in La Jolla. The show opens to the public on Saturday, May 17, 2014 and runs through August 31, 2014.

The exhibition at MCASD opens to the public on Saturday, May 17th, 2014. Youd will start his typing opening weekend (at the members' opening on Friday, May 16th through Sunday the 18th) and then resume at the beginning of July, performing daily through much of the month. A selection of completed diptychs from the first year of Youd's 100 Novels project will be on display at the MCASD, as well as a number of Youd's idiosyncratic sculpted cardboard typewriter "portraits."

Author, Raymond Chandler lived the last decade of his life in La Jolla, minutes from the site of the museum, making MCASD La Jolla an ideal location for Youd's performance. Tim Youd kicked off the Chandler series with the retyping of the first Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep, in January at the LA Art Show in Coagula Curatorial's booth at the fair.

Additionally, Tim Youd retyped the classic Farewell My Lovely, the second Marlowe novel, at the Santa Monica Pier in late January 2014. The third novel, The High Window, was performed in Pasadena in late February. The fourth novel, The Lady in the Lake was typed in Big Bear in March. And the fifth novel, The Little Sister will be performed in Hollywood in early April. Exact locations and performance dates and times will be announced prior to each event.

The final two Marlowe novels -- The Long Goodbye and Playback -- will be performed at the MCASD, near Chandler's residence in La Jolla where he wrote both novels. Playback is set in and around "Esmerelda," Chandler's fictionalization of La Jolla, and The Long Goodbye was Chandler's personal favorite and is considered by many to be his masterpiece.

Dubbed "regional conceptualism," Tim Youd performs his work in carefully chosen locales that are geographically related to either the author's life or the plot of the novel. Utilizing the same make and model typewriter used by the author in its original creation, Youd types the novel on a single page that is backed by an additional sheet. The page is run repeatedly through the type writer until every word of the novel has been retyped. Upon completion, the two pages -- a positive and negative image -- are mounted as a diptych, formally representing two pages of an open book.