Dear Rosa and Sebastian,

Thank you for the invitation to contribute a text for this show. It is beautiful that our time together upstate in February -- a spirited confluence of friendship, order, and improvisation -- played a role in catalyzing Micky.

I took the train from New York City on that cold Sunday morning, and when Dia:Beacon appeared, I could ever so briefly make out Lawrence Weiner’s inscription on the south facade. I first visited the museum in 2018, and remember stepping outside of the building to look up at Weiner’s phrase: cadmium & mud titanium & lead & ferrous oxide & so on...

Since then, changing policies have precluded such access to the work. Instead, I have been told to view the piece from the train or from a nearby residential cul-de-sac. 
My desire to again stand below the letters and ampersands led to many dreams about the work, whose medium is “language + the materials referred to.”

Este Lewis reading at a variety show in West Hurley, New York was the even rarer presentation of elevated language that brought us upstate in February. It was the second time that Este publicly shared Buy-Write, her experimental diary composed of gift notes that she has written for each of her online orders since 2012. As the sender and the receiver of the message, Este enlists communities of vendors and e-commerce infrastructures to produce and transmit an intimate receipt of life. 
What most people would throw away with the packaging, Este lovingly archives in binders.
 Now installed elegantly in your vitrines, Buy-Writes are documents of Este’s ordering history and also registers of what’s on her mind, generating somber, vulnerable, and often humorous connections between the purchased item and the gift message.

As a performance, Este narrates the scanned and projected Buy-Writes.
 “Ocean of pure consciousness” she intoned, followed by hearts, and then a note that reads like a description of Este’s practice: “spiritual life artist.”
 At some point during the Buy-Write reading, snow began to fall, and quick accumulation shifted plans so that you both and Este ended up staying over at my friend Stephen’s home that he built himself on his family’s vineyard just north of Beacon.

In 2003, Hanne Darboven was the first artist honored with a temporary exhibition at the newly opened Dia:Beacon. Kulturgeschichte 1880–1983 (1980-1983) is a monumental installation consisting of 1,589 framed panels collaged with postcards, numbers, notes, quotations, and photographs that trace one hundred years of history. I saw the same work when it was shown at Dia’s space in Chelsea in 2017, and all I can remember of it was the enormous scale and repetitive rectangular modules with even, cursive script.

After the Buy-Write reading, before bed, we took a walk along the snowy rows of the oldest vineyard in America, each of us glowing from the pleasure of following unexpected paths and listening to idiosyncrasies and the art that comes out of life. 
We laid and made snow angels and then returned inside for tea by the fire. In the morning, there was fresh powder on the road and your rental car drew swirls on the driveway as you rounded south, past Dia, back to New York City.

I hope to see you both soon and send my greatest congratulations on this show.

Sincerely, Max Levin