TAYLOR, Zin
The Crystal Ship

Zin Taylor’s The Crystal Ship tells the story of how a crystalline form was created using a series of landmarks in a neighborhood in Antwerp, Belgium.

This story begins in the winter of 2006 when the artist finds an invitation for an exhibition by Marcel Broodthaers dated 1969. Taylor visits the present-day site of the exhibition, gallery A379089, and searches for evidence of this curious historical exhibition by the late Belgian artist. Although the gallery has long since closed, Taylor begins exploring the neighborhood invoking the memory of Broodthaers. More precisely, Taylor is able to locate some landmarks that have survived within the area where the exhibition occurred—a museum, an outdoor planter and a bronze eagle.

Woven into the book’s narrative are a series of links between gestures of protest, artist collectives, non-profi t galleries, Marcel Broodthaers and, more interestingly, the production of underground caverns and their accompanying crystalline forms. To accompany the story, Taylor constructed a series of crude sculptures, which are reproduced throughout the book, illustrating various facets of this unusual narrative.

Part artist’s book and part artist’s script, The Crystal Ship was performed by Taylor as a public lecture and slide show in the place where Broodthaers once stood, gallery A379089, which remains open to the public today as a shop for organic clothing.

[publisher's note]

Published by Bywater Bros., 2008
Artists' Books