CUADRO is not a magazine in any conventional sense. It is a 21 × 21 cm square accordion-cross folder that unfolds to 83.4 × 41.9 cm — a printed object designed to be exhibited as much as read. Created by artist and editor Mario Hergueta, the publication invites five to six artists per issue to use its unusual format as a canvas for their work. Five issues have been published, each featuring an international roster of contributors working across photography, painting, collage, and mixed media: Annegret Soltau, Iiu Susiraja, Gregor Hildebrandt, Michaela Melián, Jaimie Warren, Marc Bijl, and many others.
The project began with three students from the Kunsthochschule Mainz — Julia Walther, Imran Utku, and Vicky Stratidou — who created the first experimental edition, exploring the graphic and artistic possibilities of print as spatial experience. The debut was exhibited at the Pfalzbibliothek Kaiserslautern under the motto "Buchkunst — Kunst in Bibliotheken," and the format has remained deliberately lo-fi: sixteen pages, four-colour printing, an edition of fifty for the numbered collector’s set. The aim, as the publication states, is to make the influence and proviso of image creation in our time a subject of discussion.
Available through the cuadro-edition shop and at selected art bookshops, CUADRO occupies a space between artist book and serial publication. Each issue costs five euros — deliberately accessible — and the complete set of five issues comes in a custom folder for collectors. In a world of 300-page glossy magazines, CUADRO proves that sixteen pages, properly folded, can hold an entire exhibition.
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