Kunstlerhaus Bremen 2005
64 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 3775714952
32 x 34 cm English/German text. Softcover
A small publication about the unusual paintings by Matthias Weischer, one of the new young 'shooting stars' of the painting scene. Most of the empty, austere interiors shown in the paintings of Matthias Weischer seem confining to the point of claustrophobia, and time appears to have come to a standstill in them as well. Weischer, who was born in 1973 in Elte, Westphalia, and now lives and works in Leipzig, has received international recognition with his paintings. He employs a number of different visual means to achieve these unsettling effects in his views of prototypical living spaces. This first comprehensive publication on his oeuvre traces his use of shifting, colliding perspectives, the motif of a painting within the painting, views into depth, and flat, decorative, highly ornamental elements that appear as if superimposed on the surface-a mattress, for example, or a carpet resembling a puzzle-which give a painting the look of an abstract composition. In some places, the extremely thick impasto rises almost sculpturally from the pictorial plane, heightening the impression of objects represented in a state of frozen stillness. Price: £19.99
Public Art Fund 2004
112 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0960848827
24 x 30.5 cm English text. Hardcover
On the morning of Sunday, June 23, 2002, 100 participants gathered at The Museum of Modern Art in midtown Manhattan, along with a 12-person Peruvian brass band, and a horse, dogs, and numerous palanquins, atop which sat replicas of three masterpieces from the museum's collection--Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Duchamp's ready-made Bicycle Wheel, and a Giacometti--and a living representative of contemporary art, Kiki Smith. Three hours later they ended their procession at the museum's new temporary home, in Queens. Along the way, which ran from 11 West 53 Street, over the Queensboro Bridge, and up Queens Boulevard, the procession absorbed 100 additional participants, and enacted a very public spectacle--part saint's day procession and part secular celebration--of the museum's historic move to MoMA QNS. This publication documents much of Alys' earlier works and includes texts by FrancisAlys, Lynne Cooke and Robert Storr, amongst others. Price: £15.95
Electa 2005
88 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 8837037007
17 x 24 cm English/Italian text. Softcover
Gilbert & George's work The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting (1971), exhibited for the first time in Italy, consists of 23 charcoal drawings on large sheets of fabric-covered paper (280 x 315 cm) and is one of the rare series of works produced by the English artists using this technique. In The General Jungle or Carrying on Sculpting, Gilbert & George are portrayed as living sculptures in a London park (an echo of the Living Sculptures and their performances). This work makes a formal reference to the English pictorial tradition of landscape painting and, ironically, alludes to the primordial couple Adam and Eve, who are here both men, in a hypothetical Garden of Eden reconstructed in the city's parks. The work can be read as a text through the series of images, but also as a programmatic manifesto, indicated by the titles of each of the drawings, which as a sequential whole, express the artists' total identification with their art. The catalogue contains critical texts and an interview with the famous couple. Price: £14.99
Baltic 2005
60 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 1903655226
25.5 x 19.5 cm English text. Softcover
Phyllida Barlow makes large scale sculpture from low-tec, mundane materials like rubber, tarpaulin, polythene, bitumen, concrete, paint, aluminium foil, rags and plaster. The construction of the works is informed by the sculptural possibilities of form, mass, volume, space and scale. For Barlow, these materials have the advantage of being cheap and readily available, but more importantly they lack the gravitas and status of traditional sculptural materials of stone and metal. The works are often daubed and splattered in paint, camouflaging the surfaces and homogenising the works various materials. The title of the show reflects some of the physical and geographical characteristics of the Level 4 gallery space, and its relationship to the city and in turn, the city’s relationship to the rest of the country. It might also be seen as a metaphor for personal and political relationships and notions of independence and reliance. Price: £9.95
Museum Of Contemporary Art, Miami 2005
64 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 1888708247
22 x 28 cm English text. Softcover
The Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition, Albert Oehlen: I Know Whom You Showed Last Summer, was the first major U.S. exhibition of Oehlen's work. The exhibition featured 30 canvases from 1988 – 2003, and explored how Oehlen pushes the parameters of formal Modernism to the extreme by using colours, forms, and spatial relationships that distort the accepted standards of good painting.
The selection of paintings for this exhibition, notes Bonnie Clearwater, "are among the most extreme examples of Oehlen's works. Although he has worked in a variety of mediums and styles, the abstract paintings are his primary interest as he believes they make the most concise statement about his rational approach to art. In these paintings he sets up impossible situations that he ultimately resolves with great intelligence, humor and finesse." This humor, she adds extends to the title of the exhibition, which Oehlen chose after the original title was forgotten. "I Know Whom You Showed Last Summer"(sic) is part reference to American popular culture and the horror film "I Know What You Did Last Summer," and a wry nod to the Museum of Contemporary Art's own exhibition history.
The exhibition was curated by MOCA Director Bonnie Clearwater. Price: £22.95
Rizzoli 2005
224 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 0847827119
19.5 x 13.5 cm English text. Hardcover
Clouds, those magical collections of ice crystals that loom above us, bring out the romantic dreamer in everyone. At once universal and breathtakingly unique, clouds are a constant and subtle presence in all of our lives, ever continuing on their mysterious paths, despite the turmoil on the land below.
In 1999, Scottish multimedia artist Alec Finlay invited people to submit photographs of clouds to an archive he was compiling called the Wind Blown Cloud. The results have been astounding: Hundreds of people from all over the world?young and old, amateurs and professionals?contributed images of their personal skyscapes.
Wind Blown Clouds is a simple and stunning collection of the wind blown cloud, featuring 170 of these works, complemented by a thoughtful selection of haiku and poetry. From small, fluffy, white clouds to roiling masses of cumuli, and from skyscapes and sunsets in silver and gold to more imaginative photos of clouds reflected in puddles, glass, and airplanes, Wind Blown Clouds captures the indefinable brilliance of this inspiring natural phenomenon.
With the brightening of skies after the dark winter months, Wind Blown Clouds is springtime’s reclamation of the outdoors, and a beautiful reminder that we are all living under the same sky.
Alec Finlay is an artist and boutique publisher, and the director and curator of the Archive of the Wind Blown Cloud in Edinburgh. He is also the founder of Morning Star Press, which specializes in artist’s books, and the coordinator of the Centre for Artists’ Books, in Dundee. Price: £9.99
Skira / Castello di Rivolli 2005
96 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 8876243682
30 x 28 cm English/Italian text. Softcover
An act of resistance, the art of Candice Breitz draws on contemporary mass culture, devising new systems for understanding reality. Born in 1972 and raised in Johannesburg, Breitz belongs to the South African generation that lived through the reign of Apartheid, which attempted to impose political power by turning social divisions and disinformation into weapons of conquest.
The artist's childhood memories are tied to an educational model that fomented racial divisions, eliminating any possibility of contact and, even at the primary school level, preventing different ethnic groups from availing themselves of a common language. Price: £15.95
Book Works 2006
48 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 1870699874
13 x 18 cm English text. Hardcover
Researching invasive non-native species of plant and animal life, this collaborative project documents, through drawing and text, the discovery and history of selected alien species introduced to the British Isles, and the effect on native wildlife. Presented as a cross-pollination of fact and fiction, this wonderfully inventive book takes the form of an illustrated natural history guide, offset by the artists’ interventions. Ten alien invaders are categorised and illustrated, including: the American Bullfrog, Giant Hogweed, Spanish Bluebell and Wels Catfish. In the manner of a scientific guidebook each entry lists, ‘Category of Introduction’, ‘Problems caused by Introduction’, and ‘Efforts of control or Eradication’, drawing on both scientific fact and often bizarre cultural anecdote.
RRP £6.50
10% online price saving Price: £5.85
JRP / Ringier 2005
64 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 2940271356
20.5 x 28.5 cm English text. Hardcover
It’s a particularly American notion: If you don’t like your religion, invent one of your own. That’s exactly what Jim Shaw has done. This publication is dedicated to full documentation of this new body of work, developed since 2001 in installations, paintings, video, and drawings, concerning Oism, the religion that Shaw provides with a back story to the mid-19th century. As Shaw describes it: "Oism’s beliefs included the notion of a female deity, of time going backwards, spiritual transience, and a prohibition on figurative art." Shaw’s Oist-inspired works include a series of abstract paintings presented as the work of the Adam O. Goodman, an Oist painter, along with his archives of "forbidden" figurative imagery; The Donner Party, supposedly by Oist artist Mandy Omaha, a dead-on spit-take of Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, only with cannibalistic treats at the place settings; and movie poster paintings announcing hypothetical Oist epics. Funny and shocking, O adds yet another volume to Shaw’s continuing investigation of American culture and its assumptions. Essays by Yves Aupetitallot, Doug Harvey and Nadia Schneider. Price: £22.00
Kenny Schachter Rove 2005
30 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 0954960505
20.5 x 22.5 cm English text. Softcover Price: £8.99
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Black Dog Publishing 2005
208 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 1904772188
21 x 29 cm English text. Hardcover
This is the first monograph on the influential yet elusive artist Simon English. Away from the Brit Art hype of the 1990s, English's oeurve has developed from the early paintings to a gritty treatment of desire and fantasy. Focusing on his current practice of detailed drawings that function as both installations and self-contained narratives the book contains a range of unique reproductions creating an extraordinary visual tale. English's figures appear as a mass of tableaux: erotic, playful, confessional and complex, but as carming and often as innocent as the children's book that has preoccupied English, The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson.
English's alluring explorations of autobiography and the imaginary create lyrical structures that are discussed in the accompanying texts by Stella Santacatterina and Bill Arning, and mirrored the design of the book. Price: £24.95
Skira / Lugano, Museo d'Arte Moderna 2005
200 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 8876242643
26 x 28 cm English text. Hardcover
Over seventy works from museums and private collections trace out the meteoric career of Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), “enfant terrible” of the art world who quickly became the symbol of the New York multiethnic culture of the Eighties.
With essays by Achille Bonito Oliva, Henry Geldzahler, Richard D. Marshall, Jeffrey Hoffeld, Bruno Bischofberger, and Luciano Caprile, a catalogue of Basquiat’s works and his biography (by Gaia Regazzoni), the monograph accompanying the Lugano exhibition retraces the entire artistic development of this legendary figure, called by some the “Jimi Hendrix of art” or the “Boy-King”, providing readers with an in-depth view of one of the preeminent figures in the Twentieth century international art scene.
The tragic victim perhaps of his own inner fire, which consumed the proudly mixed race and errant artist at the youthful age of 27, Basquiat made his entrance into the art world with graffiti work signed SAMO©, and became a protagonist of the US graffiti movement in the late Seventies alongside Keith Haring. In the early Eighties, after his participation in collective exhibitions at alternative galleries that sought to give visitors a full panorama of the current New York art and cultural scene, Basquiat was officially launched into the art world as a painter at the tender age of 21, thanks to an article written by the critic René Ricard who compared him to masters such as Cy Twombly and Jean Dubuffet.
Basquiat was one of the few emerging artists to experience not only immediate international fame but also the at times impetuous requests to exhibit his works in the most notable New York art galleries—and soon thereafter, all over the world. Intelligent, curious and full of a lust for life, Basquiat broke with tradition and blazoned his cruel truths about the true perils of modern life: money, drugs, sex, adulation, oppression and racism. The rebel artist incorporated a great variety of elements into his work, from symbols of mass culture, jazz legends and famous black sports heroes and musicians to the skeletons and skulls evoking his fascination with death.
His creations are a fusion of symbols, words and colors. His colors are not those of a painting on an easel created with studied art, they are the colors of life, the colors of the street, both brilliant and faded, overlaid like torn posters that don’t hide what lies beneath.
The chronological presentation of the selected works includes some fifty paintings, twenty drawings, collaborations done with Andy Warhol and Francesco Clemente, and canvases commissioned by Bruno Bischofberger of Zurich, Basquiat’s exclusive European representative. Basquiat would establish a fundamental bond with Warhol, and the death of the master of Pop Art in 1987 would leave a great void in his life.
The catalogue concludes with previously unpublished photographs by the noted Lugano film director, Edo Bertoglio. A number of these were taken during the shooting of the film “New York Beat” later renamed “Downtown 81”, in which Basquiat plays the lead role of a nineteen-year-old unknown artist trying to survive in the churning artistic and musical circles of downtown New York in the early Eighties. Price: £34.95
Kerber Verlag 2005
88 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 3938025026
22.5 x 26.5 cm English/German text. Hardcover
Cornelia Parker’s art comprises installations, sculptures, slide-projections and photography – conceptual art with a particular aesthetic fascination, which owes its explosive force to a critical, ironic perception of reality and art. In 1998 as a Turner Prize nominee, Parker was given a solo exhibition at London’s Serpentine Gallery. Since then her work has been shown in numerous international institutions, such as the ICA in Boston (2000) and the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Turin (2001). This illustrated book presents the English artist’s (*1956) room-installation in the historic cupola hall of the Württembergischer Kunstverein with a number of her works on paper. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Cornelia Parker. Historical Fragments, December 2004 – January 2005, Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart. Price: £22.00
Snoeck 2005
54 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 3936859280
21 x 30 cm English/German text. Softcover
The five meter high sculpture doesn’t occupy the centre of the room, but is oddly pushed to the side. Thomas Scheibitz has left space in the German Pavilion at the 51st Venice Biennale 2005 for Tino Sehgal and his interpreters to enact a piece, which has to be experienced rather than documented and described.
Standing opposite, this sculpture can be construed in its individual pieces as some kind of deconstructivist game: on platforms, in sloping surfaces, mounted gyroscopic elements, shelves, et cetera. And yet this world of shapes comprises only nine pieces. A series of pictures occupy the adjoining space.
Born in 1968 in Radeberg, Thomas Scheibitz caused a sensation in 2001 with two exhibitions of paintings at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Kunstmuseum Winterthur respectively, eliciting rapturous enthusiasm from Rudi Fuchs: »Paintings, the like of which I have never seen before: a new generation of pictorial forms.«
By 2002 Thomas Scheibitz considered his work to have arrived at the point »where sculpture has become a urgent necessity«. Since then the forms have been cheerfully put together and pulled asunder, engendering a process of looking with shapes, a process »related to ways of looking in the rest of the world and yet not comparable, parallel to thinking and yet without precedent« as the Pavilion’s curator Julian Heynen puts it in his foreword. Price: £12.50
Book Works 2005
40 pages B&W reproductions. ISBN 1870699777
14 x 21 cm English text. Softcover
Eva Weinmayr presents a collection of newsstand posters—capitalized handwritten legends that condense complex realities into three or four-line news splashes. Charged with meaning these headlines give no information; rather they are teasers with no context, telling more about what could happen than what really has happened. Weinmayr has arranged these legends in alphabetical sequence which isolated from the context of the newsstand and the header and footer of the mastheads, now operate both as a narrative, suggesting what might have happened, and poetically—once signs for news, now soul ballads (BITTER BROWN ATTACKS BLAIR), popular romance (ROCK STAR SPLITS FROM YOUNG LOVER), cautionary children’s stories (KIDS FIND CHOPPED UP BODY IN CANAL), science fiction (ASTEROIDS ON EARTH COLLISION COURSE), or absurdities (SUITCASE BODY IS MISSING WOMAN).
Drawn to the bills of the Evening Standard, whose handwritten immediacy reinforces the alluring language of the legends, Eva Weinmayr collection of the posters is part of an ongoing project, that has involved exploring the mechanics of the bills production and meeting the bill-writer, and has inspired performances and readings, as well as this short Chap book. Price: £5.00
Thames & Hudson 2005
324 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0500093253
24.5 x 31 cm English text. Hardcover
Cy Twombly, one of America’s greatest living artists, defies easy categorization. Subverting traditional distinctions between painting and drawing, brush and pencil work, written words and images, he has made a highly individual contribution to the history of 20th-century art.
This monograph interprets Twombly’s huge and complex body of work through a close study of his pictures, following both a thematic and chronological progression from the late 1950s to his most recent work. From a scrawl to a drawing or a word, Twombly’s deeply sophisticated work is an articulation of the language of memory and desire, from a place in which painting, drawing and writing merge into a single entity. Price: £60.00
The New Art Gallery Walsall 2005
136 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 0946652775
21.5 x 27.5 cm English text. Hardcover
This is one of the first publications to explore the work and career of artist Hew Locke. The publication accompanies a major solo exhibition at The New Art Gallery from 29 April – 26 June 2005 which is supported by the Arts Council, Henry Moore Foundation and Elephant Trust. Hew Locke has become well known for his sculptures which are largely made from everyday materials such as cardboard and toys, cake decorations, glitter, sequins, plastic flowers, etc. largely purchased from pound shops or market stalls. His sculptural works range from large scale architectural constructions to vibrantly coloured portraits of the Royal Family. His inspiration is drawn from a wide range of sources including Baroque, Rococo, Hindu, Islamic and colonial architecture along with fairground and carnival art and cumfa, the local form of voodoo in British Guyana where he grew up. Price: £25.00
Gallerie les Filles du Calvaire, Paris and Bruxelles 2004
112 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 2912983010
25 x 28.5 cm English/French text. Hardcover
Price: £30.00
Phaidon 2005
160 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 0714843741
25 x 29 cm English text. Softcover
Christian Marclay works across numerous visual media – sculpture, installation, performance, found object, and collage – alongside music and its artefacts, to create a unique, multidisciplinary art. Also a musician, composer and DJ, in his visual works he sometimes evokes the memory of music, such as The Beatles (1989), a pillow crocheted out of Beatles audiotapes. Elsewhere Marclay examines the clichéd images of music-making, for example those found on LP record covers: charismatic, classical music conductors; anonymous, smiling Easy Listening girls; sultry rock stars. These are then carefully sewn together to form hybrid, often humorous, ‘spliced’-together figures (Body Mix, 1980-ongoing).
A major travelling retrospective of the artist originated at the Hammer Museum, UCLA and travels to the Barbican Art Gallery, London, in February 2005. The highlight of this exhibition is Marclay’s tour de force Video Quartet (2003), a four-screen installation combining (mostly) Hollywood film clips associated with music, edited together with virtuoso precision.
A respected musician who has collaborated with John Zorn, Elliot Sharp, and others, Marclay has presented his unique sound-and-vision at the Whitney Biennial, New York, 1991 and 2002; the Venice Biennale, 1995 and 1999, among many key international exhibitions. Price: £24.95
Milton Keynes Gallery 2005
168 pages Colour reproductions. ISBN 0954471547
21.5 x 25 cm English text. Hardcover
Published on the occasion of his exhibition at Milton Keynes Gallery (2005), Collins belongs to a generation of artists whose social engagement with their subject matter is pivotal to their work. yeah.....you, baby you is Collins' most comprehensive exhibition to date. It features a range of new work in both video and photography, including the remarkable they shoot horses (2004), a two-screen, seven-hour video installation, resulting from a visit to a Palestinian community in Ramallah, and free fotolab (2005).
This book includes essays by Kate Bush, Clare Bishop & Francesco Manacorda, Bill Horrigan and an interview with the artist by Todd Haynes. Price: £18.00
Lukas & Sternberg 2004
48 pages Colour and B&W reproductions. ISBN 1933128003
24 x 24 cm English/German text. Softcover
In The Josephine Meckseper Catalogue, Meckseper adopts the guise of the fashion magazine, with film stills and photographs of recent protests in the United States and Germany (2001-2004) set forth as advertisements, and 'feature articles' based on new sculpture, painting, and installations by the artist that offer visions of capitalist Utopia. Price: £13.95
