THIS MONTH: documenta 12, Tim Hawkinson, Neil Gall, Gilbert & George DVD, Breaking the Mould: New Approaches to Ceramics, Making Stuff: An Alternative Crafts Book, Jorge and Lucy Orta, Katja Davar, Momentary Momentum DVD, All Look Same?, Christian Marclay.
This month’s list will equally delight the lucky ones cruising around Europe for the flurry of contemporary art exhibitions and fairs- la Bienniale di Venezia, Art 38 Basel, documenta 12, and skulptur projekte munster 07- as well as those following the activities from the sideline. The areas that dominate June’s Hotlist- sculpture, ceramics, crafts, activism and drawing- resonate well with contemporary currents exhibited there and elsewhere.
We’ve just received Documenta Magazine No1, Modernity? - the first issue of the three part documenta 12 magazines project. This stunning magazine explores the topic of Modernity and asks “Is modernity our antiquity?” and, “Which Modernity and whose Antiquity?” The authors featured in this issue write about specific, local modernities, trace their dislocated or interrupted developments, and explore counter or parallel models of modernity. The project includes an extensive collection of essays, interviews, photo reportages, features, interventions from artists and articles of fiction- and is considered a central component of the documenta exhibition, providing a vehicle for reflection and visual contemplation.
We’ve selected a few noteworthy titles highlighting current work in sculpture this month as well. The first title is a beautiful limited edition book produced on the occasion of the Tim Hawkinson exhibition at NYEHAUS in New York. Designed by Helicopter and encased in a soft, plastic sleeve, the catalog assembles gorgeous photographs of his sculptures as well as an essay by Steve Erickson. Another special find is the very first publication on painter and sculptor Neil Gall. His sculptures, comprised of duct tape, plastine, wire, wrapped tape, and fluff balls, form the unusual shapes utilized in his paintings, a contemporary take on the still life. Real living sculptures, so to speak.
Gilbert and George, are the focus of a new DVD from JRP-Ringier. The Secret Files of Gilbert and George features an interview from 2000 conducted by curator Hans Ulrich Obrist for an exhibition at the Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris. Their long-standing career has had an enormous impact, and this DVD is an essential addition to any art DVD collection.
Those following developments in contemporary sculpture would also want to pick up a copy of Breaking the Mould: New Approaches to Ceramics, a new survey of the field. Sculpture and ceramics often work in tandem, something this 208 page publication on Black Dog exemplifies. Editor Ziggy Hanaor profiles over 70 ceramicists, including Suzanne King, Simon Fell, Grayson Perry, Barnaby Barford, Marek Cecula and Amy Houghton. With 400+ dazzling colour reproductions, the book celebrates the exciting range of ceramic work produced today.
Crafts in general have experienced a tremendous amount of revision over the past few years. Making Stuff: An Alternative Crafts Book shows how current makers meld the traditional and non-traditional to create novel forms. Gathering together over 50 projects with illustrations and directions from established crafters, this book will certainly be a source of inspiration for the seasoned crafter and novice alike. Projects include: how to knit an i-Pod cover; fashion a purse from your old school-ties; stitch one piece of fabric into a stylish smock-dress; turn an old jumper into a cuddly toy; make a notebook out of record covers; fold beautiful origami fairy-lights; and, knit unwanted t-shirts into a bathmat or weave a placemat. There are also a plethora of ingenious ways to customize your clothes, make your own jewelry, decorate your home, recycle your old possessions and fashion baby clothes and toys for the children in your life.
For another creative take on the “how-to” book, be sure to check out Jorge and Lucy Orta’s Pattern Book: An Introduction to Collaborative Processes. Much in the line of the participatory and instructive nature of this activist/artist duo’s work, which melds the boundaries between architecture, fashion, and sculpture, this book can be used as a resource for the reader to set up their own workshops and educational programs, and it includes detachable pattern sheets to be used as a starting point in the creation of new projects.
The ghost-like and poignant drawings of up-and-coming German artist Katja Davar are now available in book form thanks to the Drawing Room. An introduction by the Drawing Room’s Co-Director Kate Macfarlane and an essay by critic Tom Holert bring Davar’s charged pencil drawings to life. For those more interested in animated work, JRP-Ringier has delivered a fantastic multi region DVD of the animated drawings displayed in the Momentary Momentum show that just closed in London’s Parasol unit foundation. Included are films by Francis Alÿs, Robert Breer, Paul Bush / Lisa Milroy, Michael Dudok de Wit, Brent Green, Takashi Ishida, Susanne Jirkuff, William Kentridge, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Jochen Kuhn, Zilla Leutenegger, Arthur de Pins, Qubo Gas, Christine Rebet, Robin Rhode, Georges Schwizgebel, David Shrigley, Tabaimo, Naoyuki Tsuji & Kara Walker.
Looking eastward, All Look Same? analyzes existing tensions, relationships and similarities among the work of Chinese, Korean and Japanese artists. The project aims to include these diversities and to confront them with the western reality. The selected works touch on all media, in particular photography, video-installation, but also painting and sculpture through a strong, new and unforeseeable aesthetic. The artists, some already established on the international scene, while others emerging in their native countries, highlight a landscape in enormous transformation. Chinese artists: Cao Fei, Chen Qiulin, Chen Shaoxiong, Chen Xiaoyun, Hu Yang, Jiang Zhi,Kan Xuan, Li Shurui, Liang Juhui, Liu Ding, Liu Wei, Lu Chunsheng, Shi Yong, Wang Xingwei, Xu Zhen, Yang Yong, Yang Zhenzhong. Korean artists: Baik Hyunjhin, Choi Ho Chul, Gim Hongsok, Gook Im, Kim Beom, Kim Kira, Koo Donghee, Lee Hyungkoo, Lee Yong-Baek, Junebum Park, So Young Choi. Japanese artists: Makoto Aida, Chihiro Mori, Etsuko Fukaya, Manabu Ikeda, Kathy, Michiko Shoji, Ayoama Satoru, Sayaka Akiyama, Teppei Kaneuji, Tomoki Kakitani.
Lastly, this months don’t miss gift-- For this limited-edition boxed card set, Shuffle, Christian Marclay photographed the appearance of musical notation in his everyday wanderings--finding examples on shop awnings, chocolate tins, T-shirts, underwear and other unexpected places. This body of work reveals Marclay to be an obsessive photographic note-taker with a flair for uncovering musical "clues" hidden in the landscape and adorning our world--musical notes just waiting to be called into action. Each of the 75 images collected is presented on an oversized playing card, and the entire deck is enclosed in a distinctive package. Part Fluxus box, part John Cage-ian "chance operation" or Eames House of Cards, this highly collectible edition offers a compelling, serendipity-driven visual experience, as well as the components for a spontaneous musical score: a player need only shuffle the deck and let the cards fall where they may in order to produce a unique, experimental sequence. With text and instructions by Marclay.
Anselm Reyle: Ars Nova
This luxurious four-color album, with two additional fluorescent colors, has been made to the young German artist's specifications. While Reyle is primarily a painter, it is light in particular with which his paintings are concerned, both the light hitting pigment on canvas and, particularly, electric light, pale and acid, from the lamps and neon signs of the modern landscape. His found objects, almost readymades, function, therefore, like indices to his pictorial work. The phosphorescence of the paint, or that the paint gives to the objects, can be understood as a puzzle about a problematic medium, one whose solution here induces a new confidence and surprising expectations and wakes up the gaze. Reyle is represented in New York by Gavin Brown.
JRP/Ringier; August 2006; Soft Cover; 8.25 x 11.5 in; 256 pp; 200 color reproductions; ISBN-13: 9783905701685
by Tanya Leighton
In the Poem about Love You Don’t Write the Word Love takes the distinction that French critic Serge Daney made between the “image” and the “visual” as a starting point for a selection of artworks, films, and discussions. Daney’s distinction refers to an “image” that can critically challenge and destabilize predominant models of information, resisting the “purely technical,” that which is nothing other than the verification that something functions. Through various strategies of dislocation or slippage contemporary artists and filmakers stage unsettling tensions that challenge visual conventions in an increasingly mediated culture. The aim of this book is to provide a theoretical and critical framework for examining how contemporary art and cinema can still hold out against an experience of vision and of the “visual”.
Sternberg Press, December 2006, Softcover, 51/2 x 81/2 inches, 274 pp, 44 b&w and 35 color reproductions, ISBN: 978-1-933128-19-1
Object of Labor: Art Cloth and Cultural Production
Edited by Joan Livingstone and John Ploof
The Object of Labor explores the personal, political, social, and economic meaning of work in the context of art and textile production. The ubiquity of cloth in everyday life, the historically resonant relationship of textile and cloth to labor, and the tumultuous drive of globalization make the issues raised by this publication of special interest today. The seventeen essays cover topics ranging from art-making practices to labor history and the effects of globalization as seen through art and labor. The artists' projects--twelve striking and beautiful eight-page, full color spreads--conduct parallel investigations into art, cloth, and work.
MIT Press, July 2007, 7 3/8 x 9 3/8, 446 pp., 132 color illus., ISBN-10: 0-262-12290-1
Jorge+Lucy Orta Pattern Book: An Introduction to Collaborative Practices presents projects by renowned artists Jorge and Lucy Orta. Their art melds fashion, architecture, design with social activism, reflecting how Jorge and Lucy operate not only as artists, but as campaigners, community mediators and educators.
Blackdog Publishing, July 2007, Paperback, 160 pages, 219 b/w and colour ills, ISBN10: 1 904772 75 7
Breaking The Mould: New Approaches to Ceramics is an astonishing collection of the most exciting ceramic design today, exploring the increasingly varied ways in which the boundaries of pottery design are being extended and challenged by contemporary makers.
Black Dog Publishing, May 2007, Paperback, 208 pages, 400 colour ills, ISBN10: 1 904772 76 5
Shelf Life is the first book dedicated to the work of the contemporary artist Neil Gall. Bold and experimental, Gall is enjoying a burgeoning international reputation. Gall employs variety of techniques, including modelling, assemblage and photography. He uses unconventional materials such as duct tape, plasticine and wire to create sculptures that form the basis for his haunting, complex paintings.
Black Dog Publishing, May 2007, Hardback, 192 pages, 220 colour ills, 11.0 x 9.0 in, ISBN10: 1 904772 73 0
Rosalind Brodsky, the alter ego of artist Suzanne Treister, is a delusional time traveller who believes herself to be working at the Institute of Militronics and Advanced Time Interventionality in the twenty-first century. HEXEN 2039 charts Brodsky’s scientific research in the development of new mind control technologies through a series of drawings, diagrams and photographs.
Black Dog Publishing, January 2007, Paperback, 160 pages, 78 b/w ills, 9.0 x 11.0 in, ISBN10: 1 904772 63 3
The works in The Drawing Book, by artists, architects, sculptors, scientists, filmmakers and thinkers of all descriptions, attest to the versatility and immediacy of drawing. From first thoughts to finely wrought, elaborate artworks, from the lightest sketch in pencil to bold, gallery-wall installations, the medium is shown as an essential vehicle for creativity.
Black Dog Publishing, July 2007, Paperback, 320 pages, 260 b/w and colour ills, 11.0 x 9.0 in, ISBN10: 1 904772 81 1
Making Stuff is an eclectic craft book for the new millennium. It is a testament to a trend that is only going to get bigger. Whether you are a seasoned crafter looking for new ideas or a novice who still doesn’t know how to cast on, this book is for you.
Black Dog Publishing, October 2006, Paperback, 144 pages, 232 b/w and colour ills, 10.0 x 7.5 in, ISBN10: 1 904772 61 7
This exhibition catalog asks some absorbing questions that go to the heart of today’s art world: What happens at an exhibition when none of the participating artists are named? Or the curator remains anonymous? Or the artworks liberate themselves from the question of authorship? Readers can sharpen their wits and ponder ideas about copyright, authorship, selection of works for institutions, the art market and the financial well-being of artists themselves, with the help of an interview with uber-curator Hans Ulrich Obrist and contributions (in English and German, but not anonymous) from Stephan Heidenreich, April Lamm and Eckhart Nickel. The book itself is conceived as a collector’s item, cataloging the possibilities of anonymity in today’s celebrity-obsessed world.
RAM Publications, February 2007, English & German text, Hardcover, 5 x 6.75 inches, 168 pp, 32 b&w reproductions, ISBN: 978-3-936859-51-5
Most public discourse about the Middle East, in the West at least, focuses on politics, but other subjects are equally vital in those cultures. Pages #5: On the Verge of Vertigo is a magazine conceived by Iranian artists living in the Netherlands aiming to function as a platform for exchange, dialog and projects between artists/writers living in Iran and elsewhere. In English and Farsi (the language of Iran), Pages brings together a remarkable group of articles, looking at issues ranging from the role of the media in Iran, to the way in which traffic laws are obeyed or disregarded in various cultures; to a portrait of post-Communist artists in Eastern Europe.
February 2007; English and Farsi text; 80 pages; Softcover; 7.5 x 10.25 inches; ISBN 0000100011
Qualifying the ancient Greek saying “Man is the measure,” Gordon Matta-Clark (1943–1978) asserted instead “You are the measure,” conveying the defining theme in an oeuvre that would exert a powerful influence on fellow artists and architects. In artworks that combined minimalist, conceptual, and performative practices, Matta-Clark gave primary importance to the individual and considerations of everyday life. This comprehensive book incorporates important new information from the Matta-Clark archive, presenting a compelling reappraisal of the unique beauty and radical nature of Matta-Clark’s punnings, plans, performances, and interventions evident in the many media in which he worked: sculptural objects (most notably from building cuts), drawings, films, photographs, and documentary material.
Yale University Press; February 2007; 240 pp; 9.5 x 12 in; 123 color and 100 B&W reproductions; ISBN-13: 9780300123951
For this project, a limited-edition boxed card set, Shuffle, Marclay photographed the appearance of musical notation in his everyday wanderings. This body of work reveals Marclay to be an obsessive photographic note-taker with a flair for uncovering musical "clues" hidden in the landscape and adorning our world. Each of the 75 images collected here is presented on an oversized playing card, and the entire deck is enclosed in a distinctive package. Part Fluxus box, part John Cage-ian "chance operation" or Eames House of Cards, this highly collectible edition offers a compelling, serendipity-driven visual experience, as well as the components for a spontaneous musical score: a player need only shuffle the deck and let the cards fall where they may in order to produce a unique, experimental sequence. With text and instructions by Marclay.
Aperture; 2007; Boxed Set of Cards; 7 x 4.75 inches; 75 full color cards; ISBN 1597110388
Photographer Ashod Simonian has traveled with scores of bands, and his dreamy, lush Polaroids capture Death Cab for Cutie, Spoon, Sleater Kinney, Pavement, Jenny Lewis, the Shins, Wilco and Broken Social Scene, among many others, in colorful images conveying not just stories but the feelings behind them: boredom, exultation, frustration and bliss. Many of the performers have also contributed essays and memoirs, making this an essential compendium of wisdom and memories from the road. Others have recorded songs for the accompanying CD. The tracks were all selected by Simonian and most are original, recorded especially for this project. All of this is well and good, but what makes Real Fun more than a scrapbook is Simonian's acute photographic instincts, his eye for detail and sense of scene: compelling pictures regardless of the subject.
Picture Box, Inc., June 2007, Paperback, 6.5 x 6.5 in. / 128 pgs / 150 color / with CD., ISBN: 0971367094
SMS: Short Message Service. From this current mode of communication, Elodie Pong has created a form of writing—rapid, evocative, intimate—the dialogues of which this book is witness. Stories without a scenario, bits of conversations, fragments of intimate moments, breached identities: an experience of writing by editing, the work is the script of possible situations, real or fictional, in which several non-identified characters evolve.
Cornerhouse; March 2007; Soft Cover; 10.5 x 16.5 cm; 64 pp; ISBN-13: 9783905701364
For the last 40 years Gilbert and George have spanned the international art scene with as much insolence as elegance. Real living sculptures, they have developed a repetitive language around recurrent figures and themes: shit, piss, blood, tears, nudity, sperm, alcohol, drugs. Theirs is an oeuvre that has radically overturned conventions and thinking of the period, and which refers literally to homosexuality, exclusion, social and religious violence. This DVD features an interview, filmed in 2000 by the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist for an exhibition at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, and concentrates on the hysteria of the archive and the collection.
A multi region DVD published for the exhibition of the same name and devoted to animated drawings. Included are films by Francis Alÿs, Robert Breer, Paul Bush / Lisa Milroy, Michael Dudok de Wit, Brent Green, Takashi Ishida, Susanne Jirkuff, William Kentridge, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Jochen Kuhn, Zilla Leutenegger, Arthur de Pins, Qubo Gas, Christine Rebet, Robin Rhode, Georges Schwizgebel, David Shrigley, Tabaimo, Naoyuki Tsuji & Kara Walker. Published with parasol unit foundation, London, to accompany the exhibition Momentary Momentum, 3 March – 22 April 2007.
Edited by Heinz Stahlhut, Juri Steiner, Stefan Zweifel Authors: Giorgio Agamben, Jean Beaudrillard, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Thomas Hirschhorn, Vincent Kaufmann, Francois Letaillieur, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Peter Sloterdijk and others
This publication provides an insight into one of the 20th century's most underrated (anti) art movements. The rather shadowy existence led by the Situationists and their Lettrist predecessors in the annals of the post-war avant-garde, and the indeterminacy of their legacy are largely of their own making: their agenda of political radicalism and negativity included a strict refusal to co-operate with the bourgeois mass media and enter the wider intellectual and political debate.
JRP Ringier; Soft Cover; 256 pp; 100 color and 100 B&W reproductions; ISBN-13: 9783905770148
An experimental magazine project by the creative minds behind documenta 12, the world's most important contemporary art event (June 16 to September 23, 2007) The documenta 12 magazines are a collective worldwide editorial project linking over ninety print and online periodicals, as well as other media. In advance of the exhibition in Kassel, documenta 12 magazines have opened up a central site for reflection and visual contemplation. Since early 2006, influential journals in the realm of art, as well as specialist publications operating in discursive fields beyond the major art centres, have been publishing and discussing contributions—essays, interviews, photo reportages, features, interventions from artists and articles of fiction—in relation to documenta 12’s three main themes: Is modernity our antiquity? What is bare life? What is to be done?
Taschen, March 2007, Softcover, 22.5 x 27.5 cm (8.9 x 10.8 in.), 224 pages, ISBN 978-3-8228-1532-8
Analyzes existing tensions, relationships and similarities among the work of Chinese, Korean and Japanese artists. The project aims to include these diversities and to confront them with the western reality. The works selected for the exhibit 2094 CHINAJAPANKOREA touch on all media, in particular photography, video-installation, but also painting and sculpture through a strong, new and unpredictable aesthetic. The artists, some already established on the international scene, while others emerging in their native countries, highlight a landscape in enormous transformation.
Electa, Bilingual Italian/English, 268 pages, ISBN 8837046065
Catalog from the exhibition at NYEHAUS. Large and ensleeved in plastic, this catalog is beautifully designed by Helicopter. Includes images of the works on view with an essay by Steve Erickson.
Foundation 2021; June 2007; 10 pages; ISBN: 9781934171035
Produced following Katja Davar’s first solo exhibition in the UK, this catalogue focuses on a body of work which makes reference to the threat of deluge explored by Leonardo da Vinci in his drawings and his treatise on water. Katja Davar explores sub-traditions of pictorial representation through her drawings, animations and embroideries on canvas, creating fictional worlds inspired by literature and the multiple images and political issues to which we are all subjected.
Introduction by Kate Macfarlane, (Co-Director, The Drawing Room) and essay by Tom Holert, (a writer and researcher based in Berlin and regular contributor to Texte zur Kunst and Artforum.
The Drawing Room, Hardback, 56 pages, 28 x 24cm, 43 full colour plates, ISBN 0-9542668-7-0
