art august 2014

ART

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Ulrike Gossarth - Were I Made Of Matter, I Would Color Sternberg Press 2014 ISBN 9783956790683 Acqn 23988 Hb 19x25cm 352pp 91ills 77col £28 Edited by Sabine Folie, Ilse Lafer Texts by Mieke Bal, Rainer Borgemeister, Sabine Folie, Michael Glasmeier, Ulrike Grossarth, Dietrich Karner, Elliot R. Wolfson This book is published on occasion of Ulrike Grossarth’s eponymous retrospective at the Generali Foundation in Vienna. Both the book and the exhibition trace the evolution of Gossarth’s practice, with a particular emphasis on her training as a dancer in the 1970s, to draw connections between the early years with her sculptural settings and actions and her most recent work, which engages with history more generally. In her contributing essay, Ulrike Gossarth states that the title—Were I Made of Matter, I Would Color—is a counter-model to the fundamental Descartian formula “I think therefore I am,” a position which exists between consciousness and disembodiment, in a state of incompleteness. Rainer Borgemeister discusses the artist’s actions from 1978 to 1987, which were preceded by her critical engagement with modern dance. Further contributions from Mieke Bal, Michael Glasmeier, and Elliot R. Wolfson discuss Grossarth’s practice in relation to history, the body, and polymorphism.

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William Kentridge - Secondhand Reading Fourthwall Books 2014 ISBN 9780992226312 Acqn 23645 Hb 21x29cm 800pp 800col ills £61 Secondhand Reading began life as a film constructed from a succession of drawings made by William Kentridge (born 1955) in 2013, on the pages of old books. Conceived as a kind of secondhand reading in which books are translated into a filming of books, it is both a narrative--it begins at the beginning and will eventually get to the end--and an acknowledgment of the necessity of repetition, inconsistency and the illogical. One of today's most pre-eminent and popular artists, Kentridge has made many flipbooks and book-length works that attest to his longstanding interest not only in film (he has been making animated films for two decades) but also in the relationship between drawing, photography and filmmaking. At 800 pages, Secondhand Reading is by far his most ambitious volume. An exquisitely produced publication, it boasts a robust French-fold dust jacket.

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George Herms - The River Book. 2 Vols + DVD Hamilton Press 2014 ISBN 9780615953915 Acqn 23918 Hb 22x28cm 408pp 398ills 154col £66.50 George Herms: The River Book is the first-ever comprehensive publication on acclaimed and pivotal California assemblage artist George Herms (born 1935). The handsome, two-volume slipcased book covers his earliest works from the 1960s, through his influential assemblages from the 1970s to today, as well as his work on such films as Easy Rider, his set designs for poet and playwright Michael McClure and dancer/choreographer Fred Herko, and his fascinating collaborations with, among others, Diane di Prima and Wallace Berman, for his LOVE Press series of hand-printed books. Interspersed throughout are comments by Herms on various works and on his creative ethos. Also included is a trove of never-before-seen archival photographs of Herms' friends, such as Wallace and Tosh Berman, Fred Herko, Diane di Prima, Kirby Doyle and Ray Johnson, as well as of Herms himself. A bonus DVD showcases the entirety of Herms' opera The Artist's Life. Renowned art critic Dave Hickey provides an insightful look at the artist and his milieu, and the artist himself offers witty and informative text throughout. This is truly an essential book for anyone interested in California art, the Beats, avant-garde theater and film, and fine-art printing.

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Andrea Bowers Pomona College 2014 ISBN 9780985625139 Acqn 23927 Pb 20x28cm 184pp 182ills 170col £27.95 This publication complements the exhibition Andrea Bowers: #sweetjane at the Pomona College Museum of Art and the Pitzer College Art Galleries and represents an overview of the artist's work since 2006. It highlights Bowers' (born 1965) commitment to merging art and social activism with a focus on political and environmental issues. Grounded in the legacy of feminist art, Bowers' socially engaged work combines a hyper-conceptual and formalist approach with raw and uncompromising content. This publication weaves together multiple strands of the artist's practice to foreground her incisive vision, activism and dedication to social justice. Andrea Bowers: #sweetjane, the exhibition of the Los Angeles-based artist's most recent body of work, examined the 2012 Steubenville, Ohio, high-school rape case, the subsequent trial and media and activist reactions. Edited by Rebecca McGrew, Ciara Ennis. Introduction by Rebecca McGrew. Text by Maria Elena Buszek, Peter Kalb. Interview by Ciara Ennis.

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Daniel Joseph Martinez - The Report Of My Death Is An Exaggeration Roberts & Tilton 2014 ISBN 9780991488902 Acqn 23928 Hb 31x31cm 68pp 76col ills £28 As interpreted by Michel Foucault, Das Narrenschiff (The Ship of Fools), a fifteenth-century satire by Sebastian Brant, imagines a world in which knowledge belongs squarely in the realm of madness, useful only to those who would debate idly and apply nothing to experience. Artist Daniel Joseph Martinez (born 1957) has recognized the relevance of this allegory to present times, and through text paintings, photographs and sculptures, he has traced contemporary Los Angeles onto Foucault’s conception of Narrenschiff. Inspired by bus rides observing his fellow passengers, Martinez conceived of four narratives that explore a modern kind of knowledge-based perversity. The Report of My Death Is an Exaggeration, which documents Martinez’s installation of these works at Roberts & Tilton in Culver City, California, also features an essay by art historian, critic and curator Juli Carson.

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Sarah Sze At The Fabric Workshop And Museum The Fabric Workshop and Museum 2014 ISBN 9780983631712 Acqn 23930 Hb 30x32cm 80pp 28col ills £31.50 This catalogue accompanies an exhibition of a new work by Sarah Sze (born 1969) at The Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia. Sze's immense and intricate site-specific works are akin to drawings in space, manipulating architectural spaces to profoundly affect the way they are viewed. This work was installed on three floors of the museum, virally traversing the exhibition spaces and creating a narrative that unfolds as viewers navigate the galleries and experience Sze's reflections on time, exploration of movement and investigation of materials. Each gallery floor presents a singular experience, yet viewing all three spaces is cumulative, akin to experiencing separate acts in a theatrical production. The catalogue illustrates multiple views of each gallery floor. Along with essays by Jonathan Gilmore and Jeffery Kastner, this volume includes a 2011 essay on Sze by the late philosopher and art critic Arthur C. Danto.

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Dirk Skreber - Currents 36 Milwaukee Art Museum 2014 ISBN 9781938885037 Acqn 23931 Pb 20x31cm 37col ills £21 German artist Dirk Skreber (born 1961) depicts natural disasters, catastrophic events and ominous scenes of vague but impending danger, but with a calm detachment that infuses his work with a peculiar tension. He has emerged as a prominent contemporary artist who explores seemingly contradictory ideas such as abstraction and figuration, beauty and calamity, through paintings, sculptures and video. His subjects reveal his fascination with the process by which everyday scenery and forms are transformed and take on a separate existence. There are aerial views of buildings submerged in floodwaters and scenes of cars crushed after accidents--a recurring image for Skreber in all three media. This fully illustrated catalogue features a carefully considered essay by Will Heinrich, an interview with the artist and exhibition installation photographs.

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Charles Gaines - Gridwork 1974-1989 Studio Museum Harlem 2014 ISBN 9780942949407 Acqn 23935 Hb 22x27cm 168pp 170ills 100col £35 Widely regarded as one of the leading exponents of postminimalist art in the late 1970s, Charles Gaines (born 1944) is known primarily for his photographs, drawings and works on paper that investigate systems, cognition and language. Considered against the backdrop of the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s and the rise of multiculturalism in the 1980s, the works in Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989 are radical gestures. Eschewing overt discussions of race, they take a detached approach to identity that exemplifies Gaines' determination to transcend the conversations of his time and create new paths. Charles Gaines: Gridwork 1974-1989 gathers significant examples from several of the artist's most important series, including 75 key works from the mid-1970s through the late 1980s. It features drawings and photographs from public and private collections--some of which were previously considered lost--and essays by leading scholars and curators. Edited by Naima J. Keith. Foreword by Thelma Golden. Text by Courtney J. Martin, Anne Ellegood, Howard Singerman, Ellen Tani, Malik Gaines, Bennett Simpson, Abbe Schriber, Jamillah James.

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Moyra Davey - Burn The Diaries ICA Philadelphia 2014 ISBN 9780985337728 Acqn 23939 Pb 16x21cm 104pp 37ills 36col £18.95 In the oeuvre of New York artist Moyra Davey (born 1958), literature and writing are as significant as photography, film and video. In her latest text, Burn the Diaries, Davey considers the work of French playwright and political activist Jean Genet, while examining fugitive moments from her own life. An essay by her childhood friend and reading companion Alison Strayer, written in response, reflects on Davey's themes. The publication is part of a group of new works--also including photographs, a film and an installation of her signature mailers, which Davey sends to family, friends and acquaintances--that illuminate the relationship between image and language. This volume can be read both as an artist's book and a catalogue to accompany the exhibition at mumok, Vienna, and the ICA, Philadelphia, in 2014.

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Jason Middlebrook - My Landscape MASS MoCA 2014 ISBN 9780982991442 Acqn 23940 Hb 21x30cm 80pp 64col ills £26.50 Jason Middlebrook: My Landscape documents the American sculptor and painter’s exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, with spectacular installation shots and individual photos of his colourful abstract paintings on hardwood planks, and a major site-specific sculpture--a working fountain suspended from the museum’s rafters--as well as large-scale works on paper and a wall drawing. Texts by Susan Cross, MASS MoCA curator, Cary Levine, Professor of Art History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Carter Foster, Curator of Drawings at the Whitney Museum of American Art, shed light on three major facets of Middlebrook’s diverse practice and their relationship to one another. The only major monograph available on the artist, this volume gives fresh insight into Middlebrook’s work and motivations, from the important role nature plays in his art to his preoccupations with time and place and his explorations of both abstraction and representational imagery.

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April Gornik – Drawings FigureGround Press 2014 ISBN 9781938922558 Acqn 23943 Hb 24x29cm 232pp 125ills 2col £35 April Gornik: Drawings is an extensive compilation of charcoal drawings done by Gornik (born 1953) since 1984. Lush and wide-ranging in scope and subject, these landscapes call out the wild and the cultivated, from the desert to the forest to the sea, and show both the progress and consistency in her evocative approach to drawing. As she has said, “Charcoal drawings look so unlike anything else in the world, they have their own light, their own density.” Contributions include essays by Steve Martin and artist Archie Rand; a fascinating interview with the artist, conducted by Lawrence Weschler, about her approach to her studio practice and her life; and a musical offering by composer Bruce Wolosoff, who has written a stunning work for piano and cello inspired by one of Gornik’s drawings (available with purchase through iTunes). Gornik’s art has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (1998); Guild Hall Museum (1994); the Frederick R. Weisman Museum of Art (1993); and the Parrish Art Museum (1988). She received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Guild Hall Museum in 2003. A mid-career retrospective began at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY, in fall 2004, and travelled to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Nebraska and the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio.

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Soulages In America Dominique Levy Gallery 2014 ISBN 9780986060625 Acqn 23950 Hb 19x24cm 144pp 58ills 16col £28 In 1948, America came knocking unexpectedly at the door of Pierre Soulages (born 1919). James Johnson Sweeney, then curator at MoMA and future director of the Guggenheim Museum, had heard talk in Paris of a painter who worked in black with broad brushstrokes. He wanted to find out more. Thus began the success story of a young European painter in America. His thriving career during the 1950s to the mid-1970s consisted of shows at Betty Parsons and Sidney Janis, and exhibitions at the Phillips Collection and the Guggenheim. Hollywood celebrities like Otto Preminger, Charles Laughton and Alfred Hitchcock collected his work, which today may be found in the collections of more than 40 American museums. In 1954, Soulages joined the Kootz Gallery; when it closed 12 years later, Soulages found himself without American representation, and continued his career back in Europe, where he is among the most revered painters of his generation. Soulages in America contains a 2012 interview with the artist and his wife; a wealth of documentary material, including letters from Alfred Barr, Leo Castelli and Sam Kootz; correspondence from artists such as Robert Motherwell and Helen Frankenthaler; plus installation photographs and other archival documents. Edited and with interview by Philippe Ungar. Preface by Harry Cooper. Text by Sean Sweeney. Afterword by Dominique Lévy.

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Alexander The Great - The Iolas Gallery, 1955-1987 Paul Kasmin Gallery 2014 ISBN 9780988661325 Acqn 23951 Pb 20x27cm 200pp 115ills 70col £35 Among his many facets, Alexander Iolas (1907–1987) is recognized as a great champion of Surrealism in America, and for mounting Andy Warhol’s first gallery exhibition and Ed Ruscha’s first solo show in New York. A fantastic character and passionate art lover, Iolas built deep personal relationships and facilitated intercontinental connections among artists, gallerists and collectors via his galleries in Athens, Geneva, Madrid, Milan, New York and Paris. Noted for the pivotal role he played in the building of the Menil Collection in Houston, Iolas operated according to his own taste and discerning eye. This fully illustrated publication includes archival photographs and installation views documenting the artworks, movements, personalities and friendships spanning critical periods in the art of the twentieth century. It includes work by Giorgio de Chirico, William Copley, Joseph Cornell, Max Ernst, Lucio Fontana, Yves Klein, René Magritte, Ed Ruscha, Niki de Saint Phalle, Takis, Dorothea Tanning, Paul Thek and Andy Warhol.

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Cezanne - Site/Non-Site Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza 2014 ISBN 9788415113508 Acqn 23952 Pb 22x28cm 200pp 140ills 117col £51 In 1969, the artist Robert Smithson proposed a new interpretation of the work of Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). In Smithson's view, Cézanne's painting had been distorted by the Cubists, reduced to an almost abstract play of forms. In contrast to this formalist simplification, Smithson underlined the need to recover the physical reference in Cézanne's work, his strong link to certain places in Provence. Published on the occasion of a major exhibition on Cézanne, Site/Non-Site celebrates the work of a foundational figure in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century painting who is widely regarded as the father of modern art. The term "site/non-site" evokes a pair of concepts that were coined by Smithson in connection with his own oeuvre and explores the dialectic between outdoor and studio practice, which Cézanne cultivated throughout his career. Landscape is the dominant genre in Cézanne's work, identified with the practice of plein-air painting. But unlike his Impressionist contemporaries, he also attaches decisive importance to a genre characteristic of the studio: still life. This publication includes a chronology of Cézanne's life as well as a text from Guillermo Solana in which he traces the development of Cézanne's style and motifs throughout the artist's career.

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Tony Conrad - Doing the City + DVD 80WSE Press 2014 ISBN 9781938922596 Acqn 23956 Pb 28x24cm 80pp 93ills 69col £23.50 Tony Conrad: Doing the City is the first monograph printed to cover this pioneering film, video, music and installation artist's oeuvre of the last 50 years. The copiously illustrated, full-colour catalogue includes essays by noted Columbia University art historian and Conrad scholar Branden Joseph; Whitney Museum Performance Curator and 2012 Whitney Biennial Curator Jay Sanders; filmmaker and Anthology Film Archives Curator Andrew Lampert; Swiss digital archivist Tabea Lurke; as well as an in-depth interview between Conrad and exhibition curator Michael Cohen examining Conrad's life and career. The catalogue also includes a bonus DVD disc, Tony Conrad: Live at 80wse. This disc includes live performances of Conrad's classic minimalist works "Chant" and "Early Minimalism: May 1965," as well as a lengthy video conversation with Conrad as he walks through his old haunts in the Lower East Side. This volume is a distillation, documentation and expansion of the acclaimed exhibition and series of concerts and educational lectures of the same name which was held at NYU's 80WSE Gallery in 2012. Edited by Michael Cohen. Text by Tony Conrad, Branden Joseph, Andrew Lampert, Tabea Lurke, Jay Sanders. Interview by Michael Cohen.

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What Nerve! RISD Museum of Art 2014 ISBN 9781938922466 Acqn 23873 Pb 22x26cm 368pp 300col ills £27.95 What Nerve! reveals a hidden history of American figurative painting, sculpture and popular imagery. It documents and/or restages four installations, spaces or happenings, in Chicago, San Francisco, Detroit and Providence, which were crucial to the development of figurative art in the United States. Several of the better-known artists in What Nerve! have been the subject of significant exhibitions or publications, but this is the first major volume to focus on the broader impact of figurative art to connect artists and collectives from different generations and regions of the country. These are: from Chicago, the Hairy Who (James Falconer, Art Green, Gladys Nilsson, Jim Nutt, Suellen Rocca, Karl Wirsum); from California, Funk artists (Jeremy Anderson, Robert Arneson, Roy De Forest, Robert Hudson, Ken Price, Peter Saul, Peter Voulkos, William T. Wiley); from Detroit, Destroy All Monsters (Mike Kelley, Cary Loren, Niagara, Jim Shaw); and from Providence, Forcefield (Mat Brinkman, Jim Drain, Leif Goldberg, Ara Peterson). Created in collaboration with artists from these groups, the historical moments at the core of What Nerve! are linked by work from six artists who profoundly influenced or were influenced by the groups: William Copley, Jack Kirby, Elizabeth Murray, Gary Panter, Christina Ramberg and H.C. Westermann. Featuring paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs and videos, as well as ephemera, wallpaper and other materials used in the reconstructed installations, the book and exhibition will broaden public exposure to the scope of this influential history. The exuberance, humour and politics of these artworks remain powerfully resonant. Much of the work in this book, including installation photos, exhibition ephemera and correspondence, is published for the first time. What Nerve! represents the first historical examination of the circumstances, relationships and works of an increasingly important lineage of American artists.

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Edgewise - A Picture of Cookie Mueller Bbooks Verlag 2014 ISBN 9783942214209 Acqn 23894 Pb 15x23cm 336pp 230ills £17.50 Cookie Mueller (1949–1989) was a firecracker, a cult figure, a wild child, a writer, a go-go dancer, a mother and a queer icon. A child of suburban 1950s Maryland, she made her name first as an actress in the films of John Waters, and then as an art critic and columnist, a writer of hilarious stories and a maven of New York’s downtown art world. Edgewise tells the story of Cookie’s life through an oral history composed of more than 80 interviews with the people who knew her, including John Waters, Mink Stole, Gary Indiana, Sharon Niesp, Max Mueller, Linda Yablonsky, Richard Hell, Amos Poe and Raymond Foye. The contributors take us from the late-1960s artist communes of Baltimore to 1970s Provincetown and New York, through 1980s Berlin and Positano. Along with the text, Edgewise includes artwork, unpublished photographs and archival material and photography by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, David Armstrong, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar and others.

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Gerhard Richter – Books Gregory R. Miller & Company 2014 ISBN 9781941366011 Acqn 23917 Pb 15x21cm 122pp 24col ills £17.50 Gerhard Richter (born 1932) is predominantly known for his paintings and drawings, which strike a playful balance between photo-realism and abstraction, while at once delving into often controversial political commentary. His works have explored a multitude of media, from photo-based, monochrome and brightly coloured paintings to ink-doused papers and thin, multicoloured strips of pure pattern. Beyond his artistic works, and particularly in recent years, Richter has published extensively on his vision of art and artistic values: in letters, interviews, public statements, excerpts and articles, Richter has established himself as a brilliant advocate of contemporary painting. Richter has also increasingly explored the possibilities of the book as medium in a series of extraordinary artist's books. Gerhard Richter: Books takes an in-depth look at his work in this medium. It features a book-length interview with the artist by internationally renowned art critic and historian Hans Ulrich Obrist, who walks us through the Richter archive and discusses the work with the artist himself, affording the reader an entirely new perspective on his works. The book also includes a new text by Kunstmuseum Winterthur director Dieter Schwarz.

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Konstantin Trubkovich - Leap Second Osmos 2014 ISBN 9780988340480 Acqn 23926 Hb 19x27cm 160pp col ills £45.50 This first monograph on the oeuvre of Kon Trubkovich (born 1979) surveys the Russian artist's career in colour reproductions and in-depth critical discussion, traversing the period from his first museum exhibition in 2006 to the present day. His works delve into themes of rebellion, memory, imprisonment and perception through a wide variety of media, including painting, drawing, photography and sculpture. Trubkovich's multimedia creations are generally based upon film stills, sourced from videos that range from prison footage to found movie clips and home videos. Extended across a series, these isolated fragments, generally distorted or grainy, evoke human processes of memorialization and psychological narrative. The artist's solo exhibitions, all of which are touched upon here, include No Country for Old Men MoMA (PS1), Almost Nowhere, Signali (both Marianne Boesky) and Leap Second (OHWOW).

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Robert Lehman Lectures On Contemporary Art No. 5 DIA Center For The Arts 2014 ISBN 9780944521809 Acqn 23953 Pb 13x20cm 176pp 57ills 12col £11.95 From 1992 to 2004, Dia Art Foundation presented the Robert Lehman Lectures on Contemporary Art, in which a distinguished array of scholars, critics and cultural historians engaged in cross-disciplinary critical discourse around Dia's exhibition program. The lectures were subsequently collected into a related series of publications, providing a valuable record and extending the debate on contemporary artistic practice and theory. This fifth and final volume focuses on analyses of the work of internationally recognized artists Jo Baer, Pierre Huyghe, Vera Lutter, Gerhard Richter, Rosemarie Trockel and Robert Whitman.

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Michael Auder - Stories, Myths, Ironies, And Other Songs: Conceived, Directed, Edited, And Produced By M. Auder Sternberg Press 2014 ISBN 9783956790232 Acqn 23989 Pb 20x30cm 300pp 550ills 500col £31 Since his arrival in New York in 1969, the French artist Michel Auder (b.1945, Soissons, France) has authored more than five hundred video works that chart five decades of the medium’s history. Employing new video formats as they become available, many of which have quickly fallen into obsolescence, Auder has prolifically produced short feature films as well as video installations and photography that transgress genres, gleaning the fields of art history, literature, commercial television and experimental cinema. At once poetic and critical, cruel and confessional, Auder’s casually virtuosic oeuvre continues to disrupt traditional perceptual habits of moviegoers and art audiences alike, subverting notions of filmic narrative and process. This new monograph includes ‘Twenty Film-Poems for M. Auder,’ a series of mini-essays on selected videos by Quinn Latimer, an American poet and critic based in Basel, as well as ‘Portrait of the Marauder,’ an extensive interview with the artist by Adam Szymczyk, director of Kunsthalle Basel. The book, which also includes a catalogue raisonne of Auder’s video works, was designed by Julia Born, a Swiss graphic designer who lives and works in Berlin.

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Richard Slee - Means Of Production Tullie House Museum 2014 ISBN 9781908971333 Acqn 23990 Hb 22x28cm 108pp 43ills 35col £25 Richard Slee (born Carlisle, 1946) has built a reputation as one of Britain’s most important contemporary ceramic artists. His work challenges conventional notions of ceramic art and demonstrates the fluid boundaries of 21st century ceramic practice. Slee’s work is celebrated as art and craft as he remains committed to craft processes and the domestic environment. Slee’s one-off pieces demonstrate his peerless ability to create impeccable super shiny ceramics. His pieces flawlessly integrate sourced materials and readymades from DIY stores, toyshops and sports shops.

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Robert Seydel - A Picture Is Always A Book Siglio 2014 ISBN 9781938221064 Acqn 23920 Hb 15x22cm 112pp 73col ills £25 Artist and writer Robert Seydel (1960–2011) often used personas and fictional constructs in a vast body of work that incorporated collage, drawing, photography and writing. His primary alter ego Ruth Greisman--banker by day, artist by night, friend of Marcel Duchamp and Joseph Cornell--lived in Queens, caring for her shell-shocked brother, a veteran of WWI. This book collects Ruth’s “journal pages,” typed on paper purloined from old photo albums and adorned with drawings, narrating Ruth’s inner life and the tenuous creation of self. She says, “I’ll invent who I am, against what is. My time and name: a Queens of the mind.” All of Ruth’s works--collages, journal pages and drawings--were purportedly discovered buried in boxes of miscellany in the Joseph Cornell Study Center at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art and in the family garage. A definitive selection will be exhibited at the Neilson Library, Smith College.

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Arthur Sze And Susan York - The Unfolding Centre Radius Books 2014 ISBN 9781934435694 Acqn 23993 Hb 30x38cm 96pp 34ills £35 The Unfolding Center is a collaboration between visual artist Susan York and poet Arthur Sze. For this project, York has created 11 diptychs comprised of 22 densely layered graphite drawings, which are interleaved with Sze’s extended polyvocal poem.

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Wolfgang Oelze - The Qualm Revolver Publishing by VVV 2014 ISBN 9783957630957 Acqn 23839 Pb 24x32cm 96pp 70col ills £19.50 "Motifs of inclusion and smoke are recurring visual elements in the photo and video work of Wolfgang Oelze. They characterize how he visually addresses voids, labyrinths, bunkers, mounds, quarries and catacombs, or fuzzy spots in various spaces, which first come across like places of memory without disclosing the contents of the memory. In some places, slender plumes of smoke arise without a visible source of fire, spreading like ground mist in the scattered sunlight like local ectoplasms, apparitions in haunted locations that invoke no wars, acts of violence, or sacrificial rituals. [....] They are the effects of the formlessness that correspond to one’s own unconscious – and a respect for the power of this unconscious. The formless is exterior, in the face of the sea or threatening sky; the formless is interior, like under the glass bell jar, which only allows the smoke to escape outside. But where does the formless in the sea, clouds, or woods concur with the formless in oneself, a feeling of anguish or qualm? [In German, the word Qualm (smoke) is closely related etymologically to the word Qual (anguish)]. What smoke passes from inside to outside, from outside to inside? Why do accidents – and the rising billows of smoke signalling and surrounding them – have such a power of attraction?” Thomas Macho «Spellbound by the Formless», (from the catalogue text). With texts by Jens Asthoff and Thomas Macho.

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The Very Last Judgment Triptych Revolver Publishing by VVV 2014 ISBN 9783957630971 Acqn 23845 Pb 14x20cm 248pp 20col ills £19.95 In The Very Last Judgement Triptych, the city and the world once again face final judgment. Unlike Bosch‘s Last Judgment Triptych, its topography is a radically secular one. The spatial coordinates of contemporary cosmopolitans, which The Very Last Judgement Triptych is intended to bring to mind, are no longer the Creation, Heaven and Hell, but the city, the state and the ‘Empire’. Is expulsion the faith of the Multitude? Anti-gentrification activists squat buildings, the Occupy movement occupies places and parks; but the last image we see is the image of their expulsion. Does it have to be like this? How can a more just world come into existence if we have lost faith in the prophecy of a Judgment Day? This book documents the exhibition in the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with works and texts by Alice Creischer, Andreas Siekmann, Ina Wudtke, Maruša Sagadin, Herman Asselberghs and Dieter Lesage.

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Secundino Hernandez Victoria Miro Gallery 2014 ISBN 9780992709235 Acqn 23997 Pb 18x24cm 64pp 29col ills £18.75 Hernández's diverse and energetic painting features intricately structured compositions that mix strong linear elements and rich bursts of colour. Some canvases feature abstracted, atomised forms, while others have more densely overlaid imagery in which it is possible to pick out figurative elements. His paintings deftly combine representation and abstraction, linear draughtsmanship and colouration, minimalism and gesturalism. Over the course of his career Hernández has mixed diverse references: a physicality that recalls Action Painting, the shorthand figuration of cartoons, and passages evoking painterly precedents ranging from El Greco to Giacometti, Velázquez to Picabia. This stylistic multiplicity grows out of Hernández's detailed and informed knowledge of art history. While his references are broad he has, in recent years, developed a specific engagement with the work of old and modern masters from his native country, Spain, as a way of getting in touch with his personal and artistic roots. In keeping with the breadth of his influences, Hernández employs a variety of techniques including washing, scraping, and working directly from paint tubes. He has a meticulous and process-oriented approach to making work, and his paintings openly display the triumphs and struggles of the artist's practice, creating a tension between beauty and destruction.

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Celia Paul Victoria Miro Gallery 2014 ISBN 9780992709228 Acqn 23998 Hb 22x30cm 70pp 31col ills £25.00 Celia Paul's paintings have an otherworldly, haunting quality. She makes intimate depictions of people and places she knows well. She has made no commissioned portraits; her portrayals of people exclusively feature close family members and friends. From 1977-2007 Paul worked on a series of paintings of her mother, and since then she has concentrated on her four sisters, especially her sister Kate, as well as a number of portraits of close friends. She has also produced a large number of evocative self-portraits over the course of her career. As art critic Laura Cumming has described, 'Paul's paintings aren't so much portraits as poems based on an intensely empathetic observation. In addition to her portraits, Paul has made detailed studies of landscapes and interiors, again focussing on the environment she knows best. She has made numerous studies of her studio, and has also painted the central London landmarks visible from its windows, including the British Museum and the BT Tower (previously known as the Post Office Tower). The intimate scale of these works can be seen as a witty and deliberately feminine response to these iconic buildings.

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Jorinde Voigt - Codification of Intimacy. Works on Niklas Luhmann, Liebe als Passion Revolver Publishing by VVV 2014 ISBN 9783957631008 Acqn 24001 Pb 30x42cm 184pp 102ills 91col £43.95 Each drawing in the Codification of intimacy is based on a chapter, a passage or a key word that Voigt has chosen to distil from Niklas Luhmann's Love as Passion (1982). Voigt began her drawings by first marking those passages in the text that triggered intuitive associations. She then drew free-form shapes suggested by the literary content and, in turn cut out the outlined shapes, gilded them, and replaced them into their original positions on the large paper sheets. The artist then continued to re-work each drawing, using watercolours, pastels and oil crayons. Voigt also added her own hand-written "notations" that she integrally interpolated into the field of each drawing. These hand-written notation denote spatial and temporal points, or parameters. Terms like “Speed of Rotation," "Direction," "Egomotion," or "Now" locate, in space, time and even character, not only the shapes the artist has imagined but also these shapes' relationships and relative positioning. The starting point of each Voigt drawing - here, the language of Luhmann's text - is fixed, but each drawing's development is intentionally unprescribed, fluid and open. The gilded areas in Voigt's drawings - gold, of course, being symbolic of the sacred and the divine in early Western (Christian) art - indicate the original shapes, or essential core, that emerge for Voigt as she begins her drawing and notation process. The shimmering materiality of the gold leaps out from a drawing’s overall composition, much of the drawing otherwise spatially empty and schematic. The drawings, in their "painterliness" are reminiscent of the work of the Modernist painters Wassiliy Kandinsky and Paul Klee. The presence of strong painterly elements also reflects the artist's fascination with East Asian art: with, more particularly, the lively coloration, penchant for gilded surfaces and stylised linear depiction found in the erotic paintings and coloured woodcuts of the Japanese Edo period (17th-19th century). Texts: Lisa Sintermann, Jorinde Voigt.

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art august 2014

Documents

river book

col ills

kind of secondhand reading

printed books

volume slipcased book

filming of books

pages of old books

michael glasmeier