Of Walking in Ice

Werner Herzog, Of Walking in Ice

Werner Herzog, Of Walking in Ice
Softcover, 112 pp., offset 2/2, 5 x 8 inches
Edition of 2500
ISBN 978-0-9796121-0-7
Published by Free Association

$25.00 · out of stock

Munich — Paris 23
November — 14 December 1974

In the winter of 1974, filmmaker Werner Herzog made a three week solo journey from Munich to Paris on foot. He believed it was the only way his close friend, film historian Lotte Eisner, would survive a horrible sickness that had overtaken her. During this monumental odyssey through a seemingly endless blizzard, Herzog documented everything he saw and felt with intense sincerity. This diary is dotted with a pastiche of rants about the extreme cold and utter loneliness, notes on Herzog’s films and travels, poetic descriptions of the snowy countryside, and personal philosophizing. What is most remarkable is that the reading of the book is in continuity with the experience of watching his films; it’s as if, through this walk, we witness the process in which images are born. Although he received a literary award for it, this introspective masterpiece has lingered out of print since 1979. Beautifully designed and emotionally impressive, Of Walking in Ice is the first in a color-coded series of remarkable yet long-forgotten titles being republished by Free Association.

LACE: Living the Archive

LACE: Living the Archive

Carol A. Stakenas, LACE: Living the Archive
Hardcover, 108 pp., offset 1/1, 8.75 x 11 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-937335-21-5
Published by LACE

$30.00 ·

Selected Publications & Print Ephemera from the LACE Archives 1978–2008.

From its founding in 1978, LACE — Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions — was a pivotal, artist-run organization committed to presenting the work of Southern California artists and highlighting bleeding-edge work. Both a treasure-trove and a grab-bag, this book reproduces a wealth of archival material from LACE’s first three decades. Flyers, postcards, memoirs, catalogs, posters, invitations: the editors have chosen an engrossing selection, including well-known names like Lita Albuquerque, Paul McCarthy, Red Grooms and Mike Kelley, and lesser-known but equally worthy artists. As Liz Kotz writes in her introduction, for a new generation of art historians, movements like Minimalism, Happenings and Conceptual Art are just names; the archive allows them to experience the history first-hand. And if you were around at the time, this book is as deeply satisfying as going through that box of stuff you have kept since college days.

Robert Holyhead Paintings

Robert Holyhead, Robert Holyhead Paintings

Robert Holyhead, Robert Holyhead Paintings
Softcover, 48 pp., offset 4/1, 210 x 260 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-905464-35-7
Published by Ridinghouse

$25.00 ·

This exhibition catalog celebrates British artist Robert Holyhead’s precise application and removal of paint, his colorful abstract forms and complex compositions. Full-page illustrations of each of the eight paintings from 2010 are accompanied by detailed photographs of the edge of the paintings and places where the paint has been wiped away. Includes a conversation between the artist and Anthony Spira, director of the Milton Keynes Gallery, in which Holyhead says, “I pick up on things that are a little bit peculiar and that exist awkwardly in the world, that are already abstract … My painting presents both a type of personal language and some familiarity with the world.” With several full-color installation views.

Rich Texts: Selected Writing for Art

John Kelsey, Rich Texts: Selected Writing for Art

John Kelsey, Rich Texts: Selected Writing for Art
Softcover, 248 pp., offset 2/1, 120 x 190 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-934105-23-8
Published by Sternberg Press

$20.00 · out of stock

Compiled for the first time here, essays by American critic, artist, gallerist and dealer John Kelsey convey some of the most poignant challenges in the art world and in the many social roles it creates. “When the critic chooses to become a smuggler, a hack, a cook, or an artist,” Kelsey said, “it’s maybe because criticism as such remains tied to an outmoded social relation.” Kelsey’s “rich texts” play the double role of explaining the art world and actively participating in it; they close the distance between the work of art and how we talk about it. These playful, elegant writings — many originally published in Artforum — embody a timelessness that strikes at the core of the contemporary art world. The newest edition from the terrific Institut fur Kunstkritik series.

Hippie Photos and Surfer Man

Doniella Davy, Hippie Photos and Surfer Man

Doniella Davy, Hippie Photos and Surfer Man
Hardcover, 48 pp., digital 4/1, 6.25 x 9.25 inches
Edition of 250
Published by The Kingsboro Press

$15.00 ·

Simply hilarious. Through her voyeuristic lens, photographer Doniella Davy tells a story of 2 “hippies” interacting with each other and how a surfer spends his time at the beach (besides surfing, of course).

Dieselbrugger Apokalypse

Emanuel Halpern, Dieselbrugger Apokalypse

Emanuel Halpern, Dieselbrugger Apokalypse
Hardcover, 80 pp., offset 4/4, 220 x 297 mm
English and German
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-3-905714-89-0
Published by Nieves

$46.00 ·

When someone as peaceful as Emanuel Halpern (Zurich, 1948) draws an apocalypse, things must be pretty bad with the world. His fifty large-scale coloured pencil drawings telling the story of the destruction of Dieselbrugg confirm this prediction. This is his comic version of Dürrenmatt‘s valley of confusion. Reality, which is usually slouching towards tragedy, can be described only by comic means. Both talented storytellers subscribe to this truism. They give us solid citizens with image and text collages that are almost excessively artistic and hypertrophic. But the images underline the fact that this is the only way that we can tackle and escape from the mess.

In the Dieselbrugger Apokalypse, Halpern manages to move between pilgrimage and the misery of refugees with the sure-footedness of a somnambulist. “You can‘t really be as dozy as that” he seems to be muttering. “Come into my yurt In here you will hear peace bells ringing, you‘ll see bathing towels fluttering. This is Dieselbrugg.”

— Guido Magnaguagno

A Curious Catalogue

Michael Leon, A Curious Catalogue

Michael Leon, A Curious Catalogue
Softcover, 28 pp., offset 4/4, 195 x 255 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-3-905714-92-0
Published by Nieves

$16.00 ·

A Curious Catalogue is a skateboard product catalogue of pencil drawn anti-graphics, spin-art wheels, and slalom gemstones. It was designed to take a romantic and fantastic vision of a skateboard company and make it ‘real’. Michael Leon was inspired by the naïve wonder he experienced as a young skateboarder, which he juxtaposes with an elegant, yet dry, catalogue sales format. The result is a carefree and poetic narrative carried by a range of imagined products.

Michael Leon was raised in late 80s, early 90s skateboard culture. His work lives in a unique place between the worlds of art and art direction. He often uses the language of graphic design to create meaning through sculpture, paintings, videos, and editions. While still in high school, Michael designed his first pro model skateboard for New Deal Skateboards. 19 years later, he continues to design for his skateboard company Stacks, as well as creating artwork and art directing collaborative projects.

Pattern Paintings 1987-2000

Christopher Wool, Pattern Paintings 1987-2000

Christopher Wool, Pattern Paintings 1987-2000
Softcover, 48 pp., offset 2/1 duotone, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-970909-07-7
Published by Luhring Augustine/Skarstedt Gallery

$25.00 · out of stock

Published on the occasion of Christopher Wool’s exhibition at New York’s Skarstedt Gallery, this concise collection of 17 black-and-white pattern paintings made between 1987 and 2000, set alongside 10 installation shots, serves as historic documentation of works that have rarely been shown or published, but which remain perennially influential. Born in Chicago in 1955, Wool came to prominence in New York in the 1980s with his graffiti-like text paintings, which are full of slang, song lyrics and action painting drips. Loved and loathed by critics, Wool has been described by the Village Voice’s Jerry Saltz as, “a very pure version of something dissonant and poignant. His all-or-nothing, caustic-cerebral, ambivalent-belligerent gambit is riveting and even a little thrilling. It’s what makes him one of the more optically alive painters out there.”

Eric Wesley

Eric Wesley, Eric WesleyEric Wesley, Eric Wesley

Eric Wesley, Eric Wesley
Softcover, 60 pp., offset 4/4, 8 x 10 inches
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-0-914357-97-1
Published by MOCA

$25.00 · out of stock

West Coast artist Eric Wesley was born in 1973 in Los Angeles. His work, which can take the form of sculpture, painting, drawing, architectural model or public artwork proposal, often uses decrepit materials and conveys a humorous take on the world and his own identity within it. For the Whitney Biennial, he created scale sets for a faux reality show; his kinetic sculpture Kicking Ass was a mechanized donkey that kicked holes in the gallery wall behind it. This small monograph is the first publication dedicated solely to the artist’s work, and is published on the occasion of his exhibition as part of the MOCA Focus series.

Jokes & Cartoons

Richard Prince, Jokes & Cartoons

Richard Prince, Jokes & Cartoons
Softcover, 216 pp., offset 4/1, 218 x 280 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-905701-83-8
Published by JRP|Ringier

$35.00 ·

Conceived by the artist, this book gathers together the raw material to his “Joke Paintings” for the first time: unpublished manuscripts, well-known as well as unshown works from his personal collection, cartoons, and jokes. The project comments as much on the perception of his own work through the filter of a devaluated form of humor, as on the popular material appropriated through it.

“Jokes and cartoons are part of any mainstream magazine. Especially magazines like the New Yorker or Playboy. They’re right up there with the editorial and advertisements and table of contents and letters to the editors. They’re part of the layout, part of the “sights” and “gags.” Sometimes they’re political, sometimes they just make fun of everyday life. Once in awhile they drive people to protest and storm foreign embassies and kill people.”

— Richard Prince

Solarizations

Anthony Pearson, Solarizations

Anthony Pearson, Solarizations
Hardcover, 72 pp., offset 1/1, 6.25 x 9.75 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9768664-2-9
Published by Midway Contemporary Art

$25.00 ·

An essay by Tim Griffin and an interview between Anthony Pearson and John Rasmussen discuss Pearson’s unusual approach to photography, his solarization and lens flare pieces, and his process. Twenty plates give the reader a clear sense of this body of work.

Pearson’s work over the past few years has been an exploration of perceptual and historical aspects of photography and abstraction. Working in both chemical and electronic processes, Pearson has melded these photographic methods in a highly personal manner to suggest that the concerns of the analog and digital are not as disparate as supposed. His ongoing series of solarized, silver gelatin prints exploit elements of chance and variability through a highly controlled three-part process. Pearson begins by constructing tableaus of foil, spray-paint, and ripped paper through both additive and subtractive methods, alluding to precedents such as the décollage of the Nouveau Realistes. After photographing details of these drawings and constructions, the prints are then solarized in the darkroom during a process by which tonality of the image is inverted to varying degrees through a brief exposure to white light. While the small scale of these photographs could be read as referencing reproductive plates of gestural mid-century paintings, the unique nature of each photograph elaborates a highly personalized language that builds upon historical strains of abstraction.

Issue d like dose (can)

der:die:das:, Issue d like dose (can)

der:die:das:, Issue d like dose (can)
Softcover, 100 pp., offset 4/4, 200 x 270 mm
English and German
Edition of 1000
ISSN 1663-2508
Published by der:die:das:

$22.00 ·

Some words on, and images of, dose (can).

Couleurs du Spectre

Camille Vivier, Couleurs du Spectre

Camille Vivier, Couleurs du Spectre
Softcover, 68 pp., offset 4/4, 8.5 x 11 inches
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-0-9825936-4-6
Published by Seems

$24.00 ·

Couleurs du Spectre, contains a selection of photographs by Camille Vivier taken over the last ten years. They blend together classical pictorial subjects such as still life, nudes, and animals but with a distinct personal eye revealing a shadowy universe. Each photograph is theatrically staged employing props and the artifice of light to play with the formal beauty of the subject, while revealing a certain strangeness among the stillness. Vivier uses literature, cinema, and art history to reinterpret common cultural references and create a personal collection of curios and imagery of fantastic animals and characters. The film sequences are an extension of the photographic process and allow for further exploration of themes and imagery.