Phaidon 2002
160 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 071484036X
25 x 29 cm English text. Softcover
Young sculptor, photographer and installation artist Olafur Eliasson creates works that explore the relationship between nature and technology. Based in Berlin, the artist rebuilds in the gallery fragments of the environment: icebergs at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 'windmills' at the Louisiana Museum in Humlebaek, Denmark. For Eliasson, immaterial sensations such as temperature, smell, taste, air and magnetic waves become sculptural elements when presented in an art context.
Nominated in 2002 for the prestigious Hugo Boss prize, Eliasson has become a favourite in recent Biennales of contemporary art.
Scandinavian curator Daniel Birnbaum discusses with the artist the role of location and the immediate environment in both his gallery (indoor) and remote-site (outdoor) work. In her Survey curator Madeleine Grynsztejn examines the unique position of this new international art star who overlaps architectural, technological and artistic innovation. Architecture theorist Michael Speaks looks at the artist's Green River (1998), particularly in relation to Antonioni's 1964 film, Red Desert. For his Artist's Choice the artist has selected an extract from Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution (1907) dealing with our subjective, visual response to nature - a central theme in the artist's own work. Olafur Eliasson's writings include essays on such topics as the weather and colour, as well as an open letter entitled 'Dear Everybody', addressed to the viewers moving through his artwork. Price: £24.95
musée d'Art Contemporain of Lyon 2002
152 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 8874390122
21 x 26 pages English/French text. Hardcover
This book follows the first retrospective exhibition of Cai Guo Qiang's work organised by the musée d'Art Contemporain of Lyon, France and is centred upon the links between western and eastern culture.
The first part, "An Arbitrary History: River", is dedicated to a series of works that have an important place in the artist's work: in this arrangement they all share a particularity, that is, they all are suspended from the ceiling. In order to see the works, the visitors had to drive a little boat on a river that snakes through the works of art. These works are thus stripped of their original history, background, context and site-specificity and are mixed together, placed in a new context. It has been called an anti-installation installation.
The second part of the book "An Arbitrary History: Roller Coaster" documents a creation especially made for the exhibition. The visitor is confronted with Cai Guo Qiang's vision of French art. On a background of a classical composition he inserts citations from works of twentieth century artists. At the center of the large composition (a large fabric which hangs from a ceiling and resembles a Renaissance painted ceiling) is the Nu descendant l'escalier by Marcel Duchamp, surrounded by other evocations of art works such as Saut by Yves Klein. Again the modality of approach for the visitor is very singular:he/she rides a small wagon that goes up and down a roller coaster, taking the visitor close to a "sky" which is unreachable. Price: £15.95
Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin 2002
128 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 3775712755
25 x 28 cm English txet. Hardcover
One of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, Gerhard Richter exhibited a series of commissioned works at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin in October 2002 which grew out of works Richter first presented in Mönchengladbach in the early seventies. In his experiments with the mirror and its relationship to painting, Richter often adds a layer of color behind the glass surfaces, thus complicating and compromising the clarity and "truth" expected from the glass. The shifting, hazy reflections articulate the elusive nature of the reality artists struggle to imitate. For Richter, there is no one vision, no certitude. Representing nothingness - the void - the eight large grey mirrors recall for the artist a kind of "memento mori."
The publication focuses on the commissioned project and the importance of the Mirror series, projects in glass, grey monochromes, and related works in Richter's career. The catalog includes an essay by Richter expert Benjamin Buchloh as well as a focused bibliography. Nearly fifty images of drawings and related works dating from 1965 to the present as well as studies for the Berlin installation will be illustrated. The existing scholarship on the artist does not include a book dedicated to the understanding and analysis of this significant aspect of the artist's oeuvre, thus this catalog is an important contribution to Richter studies. Price: £29.95
Kunstverein Freiburg 2003
160 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 3775713697
23 x 28.5 English/German text. Hardcover
In the light of the renewed interest in the medium of painting at present, the works by Nader Ahriman deserve special attention. For many years, the focus of the Berlin-based artist has been on complex, even excessive content-orientation. Ahriman´s Iranian descent (born 1964 at Shiraz) and his resulting strong interest in a critically reflected exploration of ideological systems have also influenced his relation to painting. He developed a dense, idiosyncratic vocabulary of formal aesthetics which includes a great number of philosophical, literary and art historic references especially to the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet, Ahriman succeeds in breaking this, at first glance strongly conceptually conceived model-like quality of his pictures; solutions of content always come with painterly solutions. This first extensive work monograph features works from 1994 to today and intends to concentrate on showing the metaphorical and at the same time painterly complexity of Nader Ahriman´s artistic vocabulary.
Essays by Christian Haye, Paola Morsiani and Dorothea Strauss. Price: £25.00
OUT OF STOCK
Gasworks 2003
60 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN
16. 5 x 21 pages English text. Softcover
In their collaborative work, Beagles & Ramsay have often constructed character driven narratives played out within specially designed sets. This new publication documents their new work, "Dead of Night", and the development of the performative aspect of Beagles & Ramsay’s practice; previously they have cast themselves in a variety of roles, firstly, as attendant corpses at their first solo exhibition, then as geriatric sages and more recently as workers in a fast food joint. "Dead of Night" takes these long running concerns into a new direction with work that extends their interest in theatrical self-portraiture, and the grotesque doppelganger.
Essays by Moira Jeffrey, Francis McKee and Sarah Munro Price: £5.00
Dundee Contemporary Arts/Le Consortium, Dijon 2003
160 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0954202619
21.5 x 28 cm English/French text. Softcover
Both chaotic and controlled, Christopher Wool's big, bold and remarkable paintings are full of the energy that goes into their making. With a gritty, urban feel coupled with a striking elegance, they are rooted in the downtown New York in which Wool has worked for over two decades.
This publication was produced to accompany Wool's exhibition at Dundee Contemporary Arts. It includes works from 1995 to the present, it offers an in-depth view of his approach to painting. Recent works fuse and layer different marks, both expressively hand-made and anonymously mass - produced.
Alongside the substantial selection of large-scale enamel paintings, the publication includes two groups of photographs, 'Studio Polaroids' and 'East Broadway Breakdown'. The publication also highlights Wool's fascination with image making and his on-going use of photography, one of his regular tools, along with screen-printing, stencils, decorative paint rollers and spray paint, as well as more direct painted brushwork.
Wool is one of the most important and influential American artists of his generation, a generation that includes, among others, Cindy Sherman and Jeff Koons. His work fuses something of the legacy of both Abstract Expressionism's scale and vitality and Pop's detached cool.
'Wool's works capture a generation's temperament and the pulse of our present moment.' Madeleine Grynsztejn Price: £22.95
Phaidon 2003
212 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0714843067
13.5 x 15.5 cm English text. Softcover
This comprehensive monograph documents the work of Maurizio Cattelan, the best-known Italian artist to have emerged internationally in the 1990s. His work has featured in three editions of the Venice Biennale (1993; 1997; 1999) and in major venues worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998); and the Tate Gallery, London (1999). Cattelan creates sculptures that mock the art system and even the artist himself, with considerable wit and audacity. Poking fun at art history (with, for example, a giant, Disneyland-type figure of Pablo Picasso greeting visitors at New York's Museum of Modern Art), monumentality (with a tomb-like marble epitaph listing all the football matches lost by the England team, exhibited in a prominent London gallery), his native Italy (in a major exhibition celebrating new Italian art, Cattelan created a rug forming a map of his country - inevitably trampled and soiled beneath museum visitors' feet), and often makes fun of himself and his own inability to be a responsible, "serious" artist. Part jester, part accuser of the contemporary art world, part thief, Cattelan also conveys a lonely desperation behind the humour and sarcasm in his unconventional works. Price: £12.95
160 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0714841226
One of the most pre-eminent artists, Louise Bourgeois is a unique figure in contemporary art. Born in Paris in 1911, Bourgeois spent most of her career receiving little recognition from the art community. She has worked closely to many of the century's key artistic moments, from Surrealism to Abstract Expressionism to feminist-inspired art, and yet remains distinct from all these. An extraordinarily influential sculptor, she has worked, often experimentally, with materials varying from alabaster, plaster, latex, bronze, and marble to found objects. She is equally admired for her intimate drawings at times combining fragments of text (featured at Documenta 11, 2002) with her highly personal writings, which often address her long and complex life story. With the combined backdrops of a conflicted family upbringing and her father's tapestry restoring business (whose weaving provides a recurring symbol in her work); her struggles as an artist in a world reserved for men; as well as her experiences as a mother, the subjects of her work are as broad as the materials in which she expresses them. Themes such as the Other, the feminine and the masculine, the body as well as her own specific biography spin a tangled and intense, lifelong body of work of unusual profundity. Bourgeois has presented her work in many of the world's most prestigious museums, including a major one-person exhibition New York's Museum of Modern Art. In 1993 she represented the United States at the Venice Biennale. Price: £24.95
Tramway in association with The Modern Institute, 2003
80 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 1899551301
17cm x 23 cm English text. Softcover
Joanne Tatham and Tom O'Sullivan make art that functions through the devices of spectacle and myth. Exhibited at Tramway in 2001, HK was a massive sculptural installation that spelt out the words HEROIN KILLS across the vast space of the former tram depot. In 2003 HK was exhibited at the Venice Biennale, this time in the form of an 18-carat gold necklace.
HK was probably the most confrontational and controversial exhibition to be shown at Tramway in recent years. The HK book provides a document of the project and includes an extensive essay by the Danish writer and curator Lars Bang Larsen. Price: £8.00
Book Works 2003
148pp Colour reproductions. ISBN 1870699645
19 x 22.5 cm Softcover
Trying to get in between is a presentation of works by the Swedish artist Maria Lindberg. The inclusion of works is designed so that no hierarchical or sequential relationship dictates the work's reading, but rather each piece is viewed on its own terms. Inspired by Fluxus, Lindberg's practice spans different media and concepts, however the material nature of the work is key. Materials and objects are often found and given back to us slightly altered and playfully arranged, for example, Mating tables shows two ordinary tables, one on top of the other. Drawing on the everyday, Lindberg's work often presents low-key and illogical humor. The titles of the works are central, but take on an absurd quality when you are presented with a dry matter-of-fact corresponding image. Trying to get in between is the first comprehensive publication of Lindberg's work, published on the occasion of her solo exhibition at the Gothenburg Konsthalle, Sweden.
Maria Lindberg lives and works in Sweden. She has recently been included in Trauma, an exhibition curated by Katrina Brown and Fiona Bradley (MOMA, Oxford, UK, 2002) and recent solo projects include Modern Art Inc (London), Galleri Puttkamer (Berlin) and Andéhn Schitjenko (Stockholm). Other projects include a Moderna Museet commission and participation in Manifesta 2. Price: £20.00
Buchhandlung Walther Konig 2002
94 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 3883756385
19 x 24 cm English/German text. Softcover
Los Angeles-based artist Jack Goldstein works with different artistic media - sculpture, performance, photography, records, film and painting. This book concentrates on his main works from the 1970s - film, sound works, aphorisms and performances. For example, in his 16mm films, which last only a few minutes each, he fixed a stationary camera on individual objects while applying changing artificial light.
The record titles on the label and cover suggest we are dealing with sound works of natural catastrophes like forest fires or earthquakes, themes that awaken terrifying associations, at the same time allowing the listener to maintain an emotional distance.
Texts by Daniel Buchholz, Christopher Müller, John Miller, interview with the artist by Morgan Fisher. Price: £20.00
336 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 3883756350
21.5 x 28 cm English/German text. Softcover
Annotated catalogue raisonné of 149 of Kippenberger’s own artist’s books and exhibition catalogues that he designed or created, and publications he contributed to, edited or initiated. Covering the the period 1977 - 1997 and structured year by year, the catalogue aims to show the complexity, consistency, depth and variety of Kippenberger’s œuvre and to make his books, often teeming with coded personal connotations, accessible to a wider audience.
Essays by Diedrich Diederichsen, Roberto Ohrt. Price: £40.00
Schirmer/Mosel 2003
160 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 3829600410
22 x 29 German text. Hardcover
Thomas Ruff's most recent scoop: erotic and often pornographic pictures downloaded from the internet, blown-up to big sizes, digitally coloured and slightly blurred so that the erotic content seems to slip away as soon as the viewer approaches - Ruff's 'Nudes' were an immediate bestseller in the art world. This beautifully printed book presents a selection of 80 pictures. Price: £29.95
240 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0714839167
25 x 25 cm English text. Hardcover
After studying architecture at Cornell University, Matta-Clark developed more interest in buildings about to be destroyed than in the ones about to be built, as most architects would. He first forced his way into abandoned apartment buildings in the Bronx, and using a chain saw, would act as an architecture pirate, cutting pieces of walls and floors, only to leave behind the remains of what once was architecture. From pieces of walls his work shifted in 1974 to the scale of a whole suburban house. "Splitting", probably his most popular work, was made by cutting a vertical line through the entire width of the house, and transforming the cut into a yawn, after lowering the foundations on both sides of the house. Erasing the boundaries between architecture, sculpture, and even drawing (his cuts have often been referred to as drawings in space), his building-cuts can also be understood as a social critique of the standardized suburban architecture that flourished during the postwar decades.
This monograph opens with Thomas Crow's survey text on the artist. Divided into four chapters plus an epilogue, this illustrated essay provides insight into the career of the artist, from his childhood spent between New York and Paris, to his premature death in 1978 at the age of 35. This essays spans the multi-faceted practice of Gordon Matta-Clark, with a particular emphasis on his building-cuts, the group of works he is most renowned for and that compose the most important part of his career.
Christian Kravagna's essay analyses the different roles played by photography and films in Matta-Clark's work. Since his building-cuts were all ephemeral works done on buildings shortly before their destruction, Matta-Clark started to use photography and film as a way to document his actions. But soon photography and film played a much more complex role, and became works of art in their own right.
Judith Russi Kirshner's essay analyzes Matta-Clark's notion of community, ranging from the restaurant "Food" that he opened in 1971 in Soho, to the workshop/artists spaces at 98 and 112 Greene Street where he played a key role in their development, to the creation of the Anarchitecture group - a group of artists and architects that proposed alternative and often political and utopian architecture and environment projects - to his "Fresh Air" piece - a cart with oxygen masks he displayed in Wall Street, free for the passers-by to use. Matta-Clark's work goes much beyond the building-cuts he is most famous for, and is strongly rooted in a notion of social community.
This book also includes a "Documents" section, composed of original interviews, articles, and documents compiled by editor Corinne Diserens. Several interviews, some of them never published before, allow the reader to understand more fully, and through Matta-Clark's own voice, the more pragmatic, technical and physical dimensions related to the creation of his building-cuts. Some articles and essays of reference, most of them published in the 1970s and today out of print, are also republished and offer a unique critical background and context to his work.
THIS TITLE IS NOW OUT OF PRINT Price: £45.00
Hatje Cantz 2003
88 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 3775791240
19 x 23.5 cm English/German text. Softcover
Since the 1960s, the works of the American artist Keith Sonnier have been focussing on artificial light - a material evoking a variety of associations with the aesthetics of advertisement and everyday life. The authors of the book at hand have set out to explore Sonnier's oeuvre, showing the artist´s innovative way of blending light and architecture by means of two of his recent light installations: In cooperation with the Austrian-born architects Baumschlager & Eberle, Sonnier designed a light installation for a subterranean passage of the Münchner Rück insurance company. Neon light in rich, deep colours fills the space, with the spatial qualities of light becoming perceptible in a highly sensual way. The installation for the parish church in Steyr-Resthof in Upper Austria, a new church building by the architects Riepl & Riepl, also inhabits a singular position in Sonnier's oeuvre to date. Sonnier's comprehensive concept turns the liturgical space into a light symbol, in the truest sense of the word elevating the "aura" of the building. Price: £14.95
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center 2002
200 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0970442823
24 x 30.5 cm English text. Softcover
"The book offers a wonderful sense of her life and work process."--Library Journal
Shifting between fact and fiction, between the experience of the real and our projections, fantasies, and desires, Janet Cardiff's audio-video and multimedia installations explore the complexity and vertiginous nature of subjectivity in a highly technological world. They are interactive pieces where visitors are asked to touch, listen, smell, and often move through an environment shaped both by our perceptions and by the artist's alteration of them. With references to film noir, science fiction, cyber-punk and various other filmic genres, her works, often created in collaboration with husband George Bures Miller, address the constant need to negotiate between presence and loss of self, memory and experience, sensation and imagination. Price: £24.95
