Collected Writings: 1993–2003

Frances Stark, Collected Writing: 1993–2003

Frances Stark, Collected Writing: 1993–2003
Softcover, 160 pp., offset 4/1, 215 x 280 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN: 978-1-870699-63-1
Published by Book Works

$49.00 ·

This book brings together many of Stark’s texts for the first time, including essays on artists and text pieces. Stark’s writing is not specifically sited in visual art, but is rooted in the condition of contemporary life, encountering along the way literary tradition, music and philosophy. These provide the backbone to much of her thinking, as do the problems faced by being both an artist and writer today. These themes are presented through a pseudo-autobiographical style that frequently presents itself as poetic musings, creating meandering, off-centred texts that are often humorous and at the same time highly readable.

This book also includes facsimiles of “The Unspeakable Compromise of the Portable Work of Art” as well as specially designed pages by Stark, making this anthology a fascinating insight into the artist’s practice. Includes a forward by Matthew Higgs.

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie (Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art)

Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr, Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie (Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art)

Nav Haq and Tirdad Zolghadr, Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie
Softcover, 180 pp., offset 4/1, 170 x 240 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-933128-88-7
Published by Sternberg Press

$25.00 ·

Class inevitably raises awkward questions for the protagonists of contemporary art — about their backgrounds, patrons and ideological proclivities. Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie investigates this latent yet easily overlooked issue, which has been historically eclipsed by gender, sexuality, ethnicity and nationality. This book creates a conversation on a sensitive subject, bringing together essays by art-world types including artists, curators and critics. On one hand, the ideas here raise the question of whether a given socio-economic background still helps define an artistic career — and to which point this career might reflect or consolidate the hierarchies in question. On the other hand, the project asks whether the traditional ways of analyzing class structure are actually helpful in an examination of who makes art today.

L’artiste, Le Modèle et La Peinture

Agnieszka Brzezanska, L’artiste, Le Modèle et La Peinture

Agnieszka Brzezanska, L’artiste, Le Modèle et La Peinture
Softcover, 120 pp., offset 4/1, 185 x 235 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-933128-98-6
Published by Sternberg Press

$25.00 ·

The first monograph for Polish-born Agnieszka Brzezanska, this artist book offers a compelling compilation of her mysterious, subtle and deeply felt photographs, paintings and videos. The book’s title was taken from a poster for a Picasso exhibition that the artist photographed and used as the poster for her own show — creating a ready-made accentuating the rain-smudged lettering of the original poster. The peach-colored cover of this soft-cover book — with its image of a kinked heart referring to her heart paintings and her musical video, Heart Play — makes the book seem like something discovered at a kiosk on the banks of the Seine. The monograph was developed while Brzezanska was a guest of the Berlin DAAD artist-in-residence program. With a compelling essay by Andrew Renton.

Solution 168-185: America

Tirdad Zolghadr, Solution 168-185: America

Tirdad Zolghadr, Solution 168-185: America
Softcover, 112 pp., offset 2/1, 110 x 180 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-933128-90-0
Published by Sternberg Press

$19.00 ·

Solution 168–185: America is the fourth book in the Solution series. Opting for the United States of America, “still the most proficiently colonial place I know,” Zolghadr provides a compilation of highly entertaining “solutions,” where the objective is not the education of America so much as the pleasure of a text that purports to be just that. Tirdad Zolghadr is a writer/curator based in Berlin. He is editor-at-large for Cabinet magazine. He organized the United Arab Emirates pavilion, Venice Biennale 2009, and the long-term project Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie (with Nav Haq). Zolghadr teaches at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Circles, Colour Structure Studies 1970/71

Bridget Riley, Circles, Colour Structure Studies 1970/71

Bridget Riley, Circles, Colour Structure Studies 1970/71
Softcover, 48 pp., offset 4/4, 245 x 260 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-905464-19-7
Published by Ridinghouse

$35.00 ·

This elegant, slim catalog accompanies Bridget Riley’s exhibition Circles Colour Structure: Studies 1970/71, shown at Karsten Schubert in London. This series of 22 gouaches was shown and published here for the first time, accompanied by an interview between the artist and her close friend Robert Kudielka, done in 1972, just following the creation of the works. “The studies I make have different purposes,” Riley said. “Obviously, many studies will be discarded en route to a painting, though they may still be interesting as visual statements.” A fascinating look at the process of this important artist.

Robert Holyhead

Robert Holyhead, New Paintings

Robert Holyhead, New Paintings
Softcover, 24 pp., offset 4/4, 205 x 275 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-905464-24-1
Published by Ridinghouse

$22.00 ·

This small but beautifuly produced exhibition catalog presents ten new paintings by the British artist Robert Holyhead. His work is marked by expanses of white ground left uncovered and traces of color at the canvas-edge where paint has been carefully removed from the surface. In dialog with Holyhead’s paintings is an in-depth essay by art historian Anna Lovatt. She discusses how the work is temporally bounded by the moment of the paint’s application and the point at which it begins to dry. Together, this group of paintings demonstrates the surprisingly diverse outcomes of this restricted situation.

Rex Reason (solid gaseous liquid synthetic)

Simon Patterson, Rex Reason (solid gaseous liquid synthetic)

Simon Patterson, Rex Reason (solid gaseous liquid synthetic)
Softcover, 116 pp., offset 5/1, 105 x 130 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-870699-13-6
Published by Book Works

$16.00 ·

Rex Reason presents the Periodic Table of the Elements in book form. A colour-coding system is set up (black for solids, blue for liquids and yellow synthetics) but where we might expect to find hydrogen, helium or lithium we find Yul Brynner, William Hogarth and Maria Callas. The selected names relate to the chemical symbol for each element: both letters must appear in the chosen name for example, Bertolt Brecht (Br, Bromine).

A loose logic prevails in the choice of names, for example names in red, gases, are from Greek myth or history and the yellow synthetic elements are given their proper names. However, Patterson disrupts this system with red herrings, mysteries and riddles that test the reader’s knowledge and that expose the inherent human desire to establish order and meaning.

The Last Whole Earth Catalog

Stewart Brand, The Last Whole Earth Catalog

Stewart Brand, The Last Whole Earth Catalog
Softcover, 452 pp., web offset 1/1, 10.75 x 14.25 inches
First edition (1971)
ISBN 0-394-70459-20
Published by Portola Institute

$55.00 · out of stock

condition: good, edge wear, worn cover/spine, interior discolored, very good reference copy.

We can’t put it together. It is together.

The Whole Earth Catalog is an American counterculture catalog published by Stewart Brand between 1968 and 1972, and occasionally thereafter, until 1998. Although the WECs listed all sorts of products for sale (clothing, books, tools, machines, seeds — things useful for a creative or self-sustainable lifestyle), the Whole Earth Catalogs themselves did not sell any of the products. Instead the vendors and their prices were listed right alongside with the items.

The title Whole Earth Catalog came from a previous project of Stewart Brand. In 1966, he initiated a public campaign to have NASA release the then-rumored satellite photo of the sphere of Earth as seen from space, the first image of the “Whole Earth.” He thought the image might be a powerful symbol, evoking a sense of shared destiny and adaptive strategies from people. The Stanford-educated Brand, a biologist with strong artistic and social interests, believed that there was a groundswell of commitment to thoroughly renovating American industrial society along ecologically and socially just lines, whatever they might prove to be.

Function
The Whole Earth Catalog functions as an evaluation and access device. With it, the user should know better what is worth getting and where and how to do the getting. An item is listed in the Catalog if it is deemed:

1. Useful as a tool
2. Relevant to independent education
3. High quality or low cost
4. Not already common knowledge
5. Easily available by mail

Catalog listings are continually revised according to the experience and suggestions of Catalog users and staff.

Purpose
We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory — as via government, big business, formal education, church — has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing — power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested. Tools that aid this process are sought and promoted by The Whole Earth Catalog.

Earth and Cave Architecture of Peter Vetsch

Erhard Wagner and Christoph Schubert-Weller, Earth and Cave Architecture of Peter Vetsch

Erhard Wagner and Christoph Schubert-Weller, Earth and Cave Architecture of Peter Vetsch
Hardcover, 136 pp., offset 4/4, 305 x 225 mm
English and German
ISBN 3-7212-0282-1
Published by Verlag Niggli

$49.00 ·

The architect Peter Vetsch of Dietikon, Switzerland is a controversial figure. No one is indifferent to him. His earth-covered-dwellings — often called “cave houses” — belong to the most highly individual, yet simplest and clearest design forms in modern architecture.

Foreword by Max Bill.

Solution 186-195: Dubai Democracy (Where Desert Dreams Come True)

Ingo Niermann, Solution 186-195: Dubai Democracy (Where Desert Dreams Come True)

Ingo Niermann, Solution 186-195: Dubai Democracy
Softcover, 128 pp., offset 3/1, 110 x 180 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-934105-17-7
Published by Sternberg Press

$19.00 ·

Using Dubai as a sort of modernist blank slate for urban and social renewal, author Ingo Niermann — a relentlessly creative artist whose tongue is firmly jammed into his cheek — confronts today’s most relevant cultural and technological developments with elixirs that are as pertinent as they are unbelievable. In the fifth book in the Solution series, Niermann sees Dubai, a sparsely populated piece of desert, become specialized as housing the global center for treating diabetes, called Sugar World. And the Gulf state will be Kumbaya-style universal, too, offering non-confrontational public spaces where both a state of total advertising and compulsive kindness, or what he calls a “personal humaneness account,” co-exist.

“Ingo Niermann is the author and brain behind some of the most intriguing and bizarre intellectual speculations of the last years.”

—Fabrizio Gallanti, Abitare

Weaverbird & Other Words

Marc Hundley, Weaverbird & Other Words

Marc Hundley, Weaverbird & Other Words
Hardcover, 68 pp., offset 4/4, 183 x 251 mm
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-0-9806516-2-1
Published by Rainoff Books

$40.00 ·

First monograph by Canadian-born, New York-based artist Marc Hundley, traces a curated-selection of his divergent work from the beginning of the century until present.

The Passed Note

Conor OBrien, The Passed Note

Conor O’Brien, The Passed Note
Hardcover, 68 pp., offset 4/4, 203 x 251 mm
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-0-9806516-1-4
Published by Rainoff Books

$50.00 ·

This meticulously produced volume of work by Conor O’Brien further expands on the young Australian photographer’s oblique, unadorned renderings of youth, friendship and the spaces we share. Includes a short story by Amanda Maxwell.

Four Over One

Phil Chang, Four Over One

Phil Chang, Four Over One
Hardcover, 64 pp., offset 4/1, 240 x 320 mm
Edition of 500
ISBN 978-087588720-4-9
Published by LACMA

$39.00 ·

In Four Over One, the Los Angeles based artist Phil Chang employs the format of an artists book to explore ideas of economy and obsolescence. In collaboration with designer Jonathan Maghen, Four Over One is structured around Chang’s interest in how new outcomes arise from an antagonism between perceived and actual forms of value. The photographs that appear in the book were created using expired photographic materials exposed by an archival book scanner. Through a sparse display of color, black and white, and half-tone photographs, in conjunction with a restrained typographic treatment, Four Over One employs an economy of scale in order to consider the roles of abstraction, methods of art production, and modes of distribution in our contemporary culture.

Artforum 500 Words.