ART IN REVIEW Jill Magid: ‘Woman With Sombrero’ By KEN JOHNSON | November 28, 2013

 Jill Magid's pine lectern inspired by the Mexican Modernist architect Luis Barragán, with mounted reproductions from his personal archive. Photo Courtesy Yvon Lambert, Paris and RaebervonStenglin, Zurich. The key to Jill Magid’s exquisitely sly exhibition is in a pair of letters displayed at the start. One is from Ms. Magid to Federica Zanco, director of the Barragan Foundation in Switzerland, which is dedicated to the work of the celebrated Mexican Modernist architect Luis Barragán (1902-88). In the other letter, shown on a computer tablet, Ms. Zanco denies Ms. Magid’s request to borrow some Barragán-related items for this exhibition. It’s important to know that Ms. Zanco is married to Rolf Fehlbaum, chairman of the Swiss furniture company Vitra, which owns Barragán’s professional archive and rights to use of his name and work. Ms. Magid was denied access to that archive. A recording of Ms. Magid reading another missive — ostensibly a love letter from her to Ms. Zanco — accompanies a slide show of dozens of pictures of young women. Ms. Magid didn’t write the letter but found it in Barragán’s personal files at the Fundación de Arquitectura Tapatía Luis Barragán in Mexico, along with a collection of selfies sent to him by many different women at his request. Ms. Magid altered the letter by making herself its author and Ms. Zanco its addressee. Of course, Ms. Magid doesn’t love Ms. Zanco; she wants to needle her, which is pretty funny. As a case study in intellectual property law, this is all interesting. Its excitement as art is in the wickedly understated ways that Ms. Magid reveals demons lurking behind facades of professional probity and artistic purity.