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.

The Master Builder: Talking with Ken Briggs by Sara De Bondt and Fraser Muggeridge, is a slim (28 pp. plus covers) volume, the size (and look and feel, with coated and uncoated stocks) of a typical Briggs NT programme. It comprises an interview with Briggs, a short biography and portrait, plenty of pictures (24 in colour) of his pioneering posters and programmes for the theatre in the 1960s and 70s, and a detail of Briggs’ slide archive, carefully labelled with Dymo tape.

When asked about his structured, asymmetrical booking forms for the theatre, Briggs claims ‘I didn’t care about beauty or the lack of it. They are purely typographic,’ then goes on to explain his colour system: ‘from warm colours in winter to cool colours in summer: red, ochre, purple, bright blue and so on.’ Which is why he was known as the colourist.

In 2008, German artist Christoph Keller traveled through Morocco with his own version of Wilhelm Reich’s cloudbuster machine to engage local people in the age-old process of conjuring rainstorms. This artists book, which combines cinematic flip-book elements with more straightforward photo documentation, is a record of Keller’s project. Small color photographs depict the cloudbuster machine being built and used to make rain in four different locations. The only explanatory text appears on the book’s cover, which in this case is printed in English.

Nothing Up My Sleeve: An Exhibition Based on the Work of Stuart Sherman, is a curator’s book co-published with the New York not-for-profit space, Participant Inc. The exhibition, curated by Jonathan Berger, took place at Participant Inc. in the winter of 2010.

Berger paired the work of Stuart Sherman, a brilliant performance artist who died in 2001, with other performers and artists whose work, while not directly affected by Sherman, shares a similar spirit and exploration of authenticity. The book is an extension of the exhibition, composed of entries from each performer/artist included in the show: Matthew Brannon, Carol Bove, James Lee Byars, Vaginal Davis, Harry Houdini, Andy Kaufman, and several others. Reprinted in the book, with new commentary, are two early critical texts about Stuart Sherman’s spectacle works, by John Matturri (written in 1978), and Berenice Reynaud (published in issue eight of October art journal, 1979). There are also texts by Lia Gangitano, Jonathan Berger, Molly McGarry, and Mark Bradford.

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.

This book, produced in collaboration with the Yves Klein Archives, recounts the relationship between Yves Klein, one of the major artists of the postwar period, and the United States — a relationship of mutual fascination and reciprocal influence. Numerous documents, many of them previously unpublished, bear witness to the close ties that Klein forged with the U.S. The rising stars of the early 1960s American art scene (Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns and Frank Stella, plus Marcel Duchamp) all make an appearance here, as does President Eisenhower! The book includes an interview with Rotraut Klein-Moquay, who talks about her trip to the United States with Yves Klein in 1961, as well as the artist’s comments on his own work. It also includes a hitherto unpublished essay by the American critic Robert Pincus-Witten, who met the protagonists of this story when he worked for dealer Leo Castelli.

In the spring of 1961, Yves Klein and his fiancee Rotraut Uecker, a distinguished artist herself, were en route to New York City. Leo Castelli, a leading American art dealer, had scheduled an exhibition of the work of “Yves le Monochrome” (as the painter had styled himself), to begin on April 11th. The exhibition marked Klein’s first solo show in the United States and its closing, set for the 29th of that month, virtually coincided with the artist’s thirty-third birthday, celebrated just the day before.

At the time, apart from the focus of a circle of fellow artists, noted critics and European dealers, a few alert collectors and many incensed detractors, Klein was still far from being recognized as the most influential artist to have emerged in postwar France — as he is regarded today; nor would one even dream that in scarcely more than a year he would be dead.

Produced as a insert for Parkett No. 15 (1988, pp. 117-127). The artists also signed and numbered an edition (8805) of 200 off-prints of the AIDS Stamps as a fundraiser for amfAR (American Foundation for AIDS Research).

Cranfield and Slade: 12 Sun Songs is a yellow vinyl album made up of covers of pop songs about the sun. Aping a 1970s concept album, Cranfield and Slade present twelve songs arranged to represent a day, beginning with songs about sunrise and winding down with songs about sunsets. Tracks range from classics such as George Harrison’s Here Comes the Sun and The Kinks’ Waterloo Sunset, to the lesser-known Sun by singer-songwriter Margot Guryan or Where Evil Grows by Vancouver’s The Poppy Family. The album combines field recordings made in various Vancouver locations with electronic sound and acoustic and electric instruments. The liner notes for “12 Sun Songs” were written by celebrated Canadian poet and critic Peter Culley.

Based in rainy Vancouver, Cranfield and Slade is made up of visual artist Kathy Slade and artist/musician Brady Cranfield, working with musicians including Larissa Loyva (Piano, Kellarissa), Johnny Payne (Victoria Victoria, The Shilos), and Chris Harris (Piano, Parks and Rec, The Secret Three, Womankind); and special guests John Collins (The New Pornographers, The Evaporators) and artist Rodney Graham (The Rodney Graham Band, UJ3RK5).

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Hans-Peter Feldmann, who have known each other for around 20 years, talked about the possibility of an interview for quite some time. They finally decided that Obrist pose the questions in writing, and Feldmann answer each of them with a picture.

Actionist, maker of objects, writer and graphic artist Dieter Roth created an exceptionally diverse and convoluted oeuvre. In Lucerne he published a series of small ads twice weekly in the newspaper Anzeiger Stadt Luzern und Umgebung, consisting of an aphorism and signed by his initials. Embedded in advertisements from real life, these ads conjured the surreal, subversive side of existence as in statements like “A good beginning is an evil end”, “A tear is as evil as a good word” and “Two tears are better than five stones”. The paper’s bourgeois readers raised such a protest over the disturbance of their peace by such enigmatic profundity that the paper felt compelled to terminate publication after 248 ads. From 1973 to 1979, Roth published his statements in artist’s books, titled The Sea of Tears (with the original pages of the newspaper) and Sea of Tears 1–5. This is the first complete, chronological publication of the ads, along with an English translation.