David Zack

MEDIA RELEASE media contact: Tim Westbury
For Immediate Release telephone: 403.233.2399
September 26, 2008 email: tim@thenewgallery.org

ICONOCLASTIC ARTIST IS BACK FROM THE DEAD
The New Gallery to debut a major retrospective by
correspondence artist and Nut-Art genius David Zack

Calgary, September 26, 2008 -David Zack: Wizard!? Perturber!? Possessed! Letters and other works
of a correspondence artist, 1938 – 1995, will be on view in TNG’s Eau Claire Market space from October
10 to November 8, 2008. This extensive hands-on exhibition surveys Zack’s vital contributions to
mail art, performance and other “open source” cultural movements of the 60s, 70s and 80s, focusing
primarily on his correspondence novels and the development of the “Monty Cantsin open popstar” concept.

Art and life were permanently inseperable for David Zack (www.ccca.ca/artists/David_Zack). After instigating
the Nut-Art movement in San Francisco in the 60s, he moved to Calgary in the late 70s, working as a

newspaper journalist. He disappeared in 1995 after having spent five years in a Mexican jail for defrauding

the US Government and is rumored to have died in San Antonio, Texas.

Exhibition curator Istvan Kantor received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in
2004. His 1976 meeting with David Zack in Budapest developed into a life long collaboration that continues
to fuel his own Neoist art activites today. Pushing the theatrical, opera-like quality of his performance
work through the use of video has gained Kantor international recognition as a contemporary
artist. He is also Monty Cantsin - and so are you!

The New Gallery is pleased to present

David Zack: Wizard!? Perturber!? Possessed! Letters and other works of a correspondence artist, 1938 – 1995

to our members, supporters and the general public at
7 PM on Friday, October 10, 2008.
Curator Istvan Kantor and special guest Niels Lomholt will be in attendance.


The New Gallery (TNG) is an artist-run centre committed to providing a forum for a broad spectrum of
multidisciplinary practices and critical discourse within the contemporary arts. Established as a chari


table non-profit society in 1975, TNG has proudly presented the work of over a thousand local, national

and international artists, and remains an active, open and responsive public forum for the arts.

The New Gallery is supported by its members, the Calgary Arts Development Association, the Alberta
Foundation for the Arts and the Canada Council for the Arts.

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If you’d like additional information, images or to schedule an interview with the curator, please
contact: Tim Westbury, TNG Programming Director, at 403.233.2399 or email tim@thenewgallery.org