Funny Money and X Projects featured in Brut Magazine
An Unusual Invitation
X Artists’ Books launches X Projects, an experimental publishing project that questions what a book might not be after all
by Stephanie Malak
X Artists’ Books, the publishing enterprise of artist Alexandra Grant and Keanu Reeves, has launched X Projects, the newest in the spirit of “what’s next” for the Los Angeles art-based press. Grant believes that editors and artists need “permission to be super experimental about what an edition is, about what a book is, and to work in a much more playful way with artists.” She teamed up with Los Angeles artist Jesse Velasquez to publish X Projects’ first work, Funny Money. Neither a book nor an art installation, Funny Money is a stack of 250 almost currency-sized bills, hosting 8 distinct designs that detail scenes like a parade of “suits” bearing missiles, sinuous trees plucking a severed human from the earth, and two horned animals bowing in acknowledgement…or perhaps confrontation. X Projects redefines the editor-artist relationship to see what it can mean off the page.