First things first:
In 2016, we started making a magazine in San Francisco without particularly knowing what a magazine was supposed to become. There was no grand "ten-year plan." Mostly, there were artists we liked, things we wanted to make, places we wanted to go, and a recurring willingness to make goofy shit happen because why not?
Apparently that can add up to a decade, hah!
So we’re bringing Grøss back to San Francisco for ten days to celebrate the whole strange thing: 67+ print features, hundreds of artists, stacks of paper, parties, exhibitions, stickers, questionable decisions, and a few objects that have somehow survived it.
Some of those objects aged better than others.
We recently dug up an old piece of Grøss merch from roughly the beginning of the magazine. Ten years of washing, wearing, folding, losing, and finding had slowly destroyed the logo. The print had cracked. Edges softened. Letters broke apart.
Technically, it was deteriorating.
It also looked fucking great. Like a real testament to time well spent.
Rather than restore it or only focus on the new and shiny, we used the damage as the reference for a new collection.
The new Grøss merch takes that accidental ten-year-old graphic and pushes it forward: a logo designed not from a pristine vector file buried on an old hard drive, but from the physical evidence of somebody actually living in the thing.
An archive created by wear.
Which, strangely, brings us to the magazines.
Apropos
In 1990, the year I was born, Maurizio Cattelan made 'Strategies,' a precarious house of cards constructed from Flash Art magazines, aluminum and glue. To me, that work represents the art world's fickle ecosystem: artists, galleries, critics, publications and markets leaning against one another, somehow keeping the whole thing upright.
I first encountered 'Strategies' at MAMbo in Bologna in 2021. It stuck with me, and I knew I wanted to reinterpret it using copies of Grøss eventually. It just needed a reason.
Ten years of Grøss feels like reason enough.
Cattelan transformed a publication into an artwork. For a decade, Grøss has done something like the inverse: transforming artworks, artists and the strange ecosystem surrounding them into a publication. Now the publication becomes artwork again. A neat feedback loop of appropriation.
One very important structural difference, though:
Cattelan's aluminum supports attempt to disappear, creating the illusion that his magazines are performing an improbable balancing act. Here, there is nothing to hide. Each Grøss is individually preserved inside a crystal-clear acrylic case—part frame, part exoskeleton, part preservation cryochamber. The support structure is clean, rigid, and proud to be seen.
The magazines don't bend. They're not cut, glued, or sacrificed at the altar of art. They're protected as the artifacts they've become after ten years of making the damn things.
An appropriator appropriating an appropriator and calling it 'Apropos.' 🙂
Whether this is homage, theft, institutional critique, publishing therapy, or an unnecessarily elaborate way of displaying magazines is up to you.
Maurizio, if this somehow finds its way to you: I owe you one.
Literally. I'll send you an edition. All I need is an address.
The Archive Is Open
For the anniversary pop-up, we’re also doing something we rarely get to do properly: putting the entire decade in the same room.
Visitors will be able to look back through 67+ Grøss print features spanning the magazine’s history.
Not a greatest-hits edit. The actual trail.
Different artists. Different eras. Different design decisions. Different versions of us figuring out what the publication could be.
We’ll also be making framed prints of featured title spreads available, so you can take a piece of the archive home.
There will be original artwork throughout the space, limited-edition sculptures, the new merch collection, live music, DJ sets, and whatever else inevitably happens once enough people are standing in the same room.
Come get wild with us.
Ten Years. Ten Days.
There is one slightly stupid part about spending ten years making something and then building an anniversary exhibition around it:
We’re only keeping it open for ten days.
Then it’s gone, gone, gone.
Which is probably appropriate.
Grøss has never been particularly interested in pretending things last forever. Shirts deteriorate. Exhibitions close. Stickers end up on bathroom walls only to be scraped into the trash. People move. Cities fluctuate. Artists become famous or disappear or make something completely different.
Sometimes preservation matters.
Sometimes deterioration makes the thing better.
Mostly, it's important to make the damn thing while you can.
So, San Francisco:
Come celebrate ten years of Grøss with us. Look through the archive. See Apropos in person. Buy a shirt based on a shirt that barely survived. Take home some art. Hear some music. Stay too late.
RSVP or purchase any merch, and you’ll also receive a limited-edition Grøss sticker.
Ten years down.
Still making goofy shit happen.
Because why not?
— Victor Gonzalez
Co-founder, Grøss Magazine
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