Selected Correspondences 2001-2010

Walead Beshty, Selected Correspondences 2001-2010

Walead Beshty, Selected Correspondences 2001-2010
Softcover, 128 pp., offset 4/1, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-88-6208-135-1
Published by Damiani

$49.00 ·

In 2001, Walead Beshty began documenting the Diplomatic Mission of the Republic of Iraq to the former German Democratic Republic in Berlin. Still protected as sovereign territory under the Vienna Conventions, the embassy has stood abandoned since the early 1990s as, in Beshty’s words, “a relic of two bygone regimes, unclaimable by any nation; a physical location marooned (by) symbolic shifts in global politics, a ruin set apart neitherby fences nor by millennia, but by the invisible and abstract mechanisms of international law”. The site inspired his ongoing engagement with the invisible and marginal territories of globalization which provide an important line through his photographic and sculptural work of the past decade. Selected Correspondences focuses on three bodies of photographic work — two that deal with the Embassy directly and a third, Transparencies, which continues the question of place and movement. The work has been exhibited at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Tate Britain, London, and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, among others, and is brought together here for the first time, accompanied by two new essays on the projects.

The Second Sentence of Everything I Read is You

Stephen Prina, The Second Sentence of Everything I Read is You

Stephen Prina, The Second Sentence of Everything I Read is You
Softcover, 176 pp., offset 4/4, 215 x 270 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 0-978-3-86560-512-2
Published by Walther König

$45.00 ·

Preface by Karola Grässlin.

Essays
The Great Persuader by Astrid Wege; How Far We’ve Come From The River, a conversation between Bennett Simpson and Stephen Prina.

Describing Conceptual artist and musician Stephen Prina’s work in 2004, the Harvard Gazette wrote, “Prina’s artwork is full of unsuspected surprises, secret compartments that pop open to release compressed bundles of meaning or coiling strands of narrative.” His work at the 2008 Whitney Biennial, for example, was conceived as “a traveling spectacle — a mini-Broadway-musical-on-the-road or circus,” according to the artist. This concise retrospective volume presents work from 1979 to 2008, as well as installation views of Prina’s recent one-person exhibition at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in Germany.

Art from Los Angeles: From the 60s-90s

Gregory Williams, Art from Los Angeles: From the 60s-90s

Gregory Williams, Art from Los Angeles: From the 60s-90s
Softcover, 48 pp., offset 4/4, 215 x 270 mm
English and German
Edition of 2000
ISBN 9783865603241
Published by Walther König

$26.00 ·

Since the 1960s, Los Angeles has been a hub for groundbreaking art. This slim volume features work by Bas Jan Ader, Michael Asher, John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Douglas Huebler, Larry Johnson, Mike Kelley, William Leavitt, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman, Maria Nordman, Raymond Pettibon, Stephen Prina, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha and Christopher Williams.

Art & Language

Art & Language, Homes for Homes II

Art & Language, Homes for Homes II
Softcover, 272 pp., offset 4/1, 165 x 235 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-905701-56-2
Published by JRP|Ringier

$35.00 ·

Art & Language is the name of a group of English artists who choose to work collectively, and the title of a magazine that they founded in 1968. Proposing a critical analysis of the relations between art, society, and politics, Art & Language marks, even in its name, the importance of the “textual turning point” in the 1960s.

Since 1976, Art & Language’s project has continued, through Mel Ramsden and Michael Baldwin, with the literary and theoretical collaboration of Charles Harrison. Working with very varied mediums, from painting to rock, these co-founders of Conceptual art remain, even today, attached to observing the consequences of what they themselves call the “depressing collapse of modernism.”

This publication is built around an important installation “Homes from Homes 2″ (2000–2001), which simultaneously references the development of Art & Languages’s work over the decades and the collection of the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Zurich, in which it is now included. Each element of the installation is described, annotated, and put in the context of aesthetic, theoretical, and political problematics through extended captions and essays by the artists.

We Are Who We Are

Hans Haacke, We Are Who We Are

Hans Haacke, We Are Who We Are
Softcover, 192 pp., offset 4/1, 195 x 250 mm
English and German
Edition of 2000
ISBN 9783901107344
Published by Generali Foundation

$39.00 ·

Long known for bringing trenchant analyses of sociopolitical structures into museum contexts, Hans Haacke has in the past exposed corporations who use art sponsorship to booster their image and slum landlords who hide behind diversified corporations. In his first exhibition in Vienna, the title of which gives its name to this book, Haacke tackles Austria’s emotionally laden understanding of its own history and national identity. A larger discourse on “the culture of memory” weaves its way through selected historical works of Haacke’s, including his 1999 project for the Reichstag, as well as through the artist’s own writings, available here for the first time.

Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans, Wolfgang Tillmans

Wolfgang Tillmans, Wolfgang Tillmans
Hardcover, 80 pp., offset 1/1, 218 x 305 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-905829-36-5
Published by JRP|Ringier

$35.00 ·

This publication is a reprint of the first book realized by Wolfgang Tillmans in 1995. A very atmospheric, if measured, compilation of black and white images, it combines portraits of youth culture with landscape, city scenes with slogans, clippings from newspapers, and book illustrations. Released now into a different context from its first appearance, the book is emblematic of the new approach and the energy Tillmans has developed since the end of the 1980s to the present in terms of genres, quality, and the status of photography as a medium.

Georg Baselitz: Collected Writings and Interviews

Detlev Gretenkort and Karsten Schubert, Georg Baselitz: Collected Writings and Interviews

Detlev Gretenkort and Karsten Schubert, Georg Baselitz: Collected Writings and Interviews
Softcover, 300 pp., offset 4/1, 145 x 215 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-905464-23-4
Published by Ridinghouse

$49.00 ·

The outstanding British publisher Ridinghouse brings out the most comprehensive look into the life and work of German abstract expressionist Georg Baselitz. The book is divided into four sections: personal images; a record of Baselitz’s artworks; the artist’s own writings (some published for the first time, many never before translated into English); and interviews with the artist by noted writers and art historians. Known for his rebellious approach to painting, Baselitz discusses the act of painting, his biography and much more. The artist’s writings cover topics from his first trip abroad to other painters he’s admired. Though not a catalogue raisonné, this copiously illustrated book gives the most complete picture ever of a seminal artist.

Photographing the L.A. Art Scene 1955-1975

Craig Krull, Photographing the L.A. Art Scene 1955-1975

Craig Krull, Photographing the L.A. Art Scene 1955-1975
Softcover, 92 pp., offset 1/1, 9 x 9 inches
Edition of 2000
ISBN 1-889195-02-2
Published by Smart Art Press

$25.00 ·

Photographing the L.A. Art Scene is a catalogue celebrating the legendary artists, dealers, and friends who comprised the nucleus of the L.A. art scene during this seminal time period. Includes photography by: Charles Britton, Dennis Hopper, William Claxton, Jerry McMillan, Clytie Alexander, Gary Krugier, Ken Price, Peggy Moffitt, Jan Webb, Pat Beer, Ed Moses, Edmund Teske, Wallace Berman, Patricia Faure, Julian Wasser, Ed Ruscha, Joe Goode, Malcolm Lubliner and John Waggaman. Introduction by Craig Krull.

The Josephine Meckseper Catalogue No. 2

Josephine Meckseper, The Josephine Meckseper Catalogue No. 2

Josephine Meckseper, The Josephine Meckseper Catalogue No. 2
Softcover, 48 pp., offset 4/4, 240 x 240 mm
English and German
Edition of 1000
ISBN: 1-933128-14-3
Published by Sternberg Press

$24.00 ·

“Politics and aesthetics morph seamlessly in a world where politics confuses itself with representation, where all attention is swallowed in the communication of a message rather than in the intensity of an event. … In Meckseper’s gallery installation, where fashion images share space with protest documentation, where an idea of relational space rubs shoulders with an idea of lifestyle or boutique design, where an idea of the social morphs into an idea of the commodity relation, many of the elements on display also double as mechanisms of display: shelves, rugs, windows, magazine covers, and wallpaper are the products here. Here, display displays itself. Covers and wrappings conceal nothing, they only reveal themselves. And, reappropriating the very mechanisms of commodity transmission in this way, and in particular by conflating politicized symbols with such functions … , by relocating non-art in art and vice versa, by this orgiastic displacement, this diabolical Feng Shui of signifying forms and materials, the artist also goes to work (like the peasant in her field, the posing model) in the production of her anti-world.”

—John Kelsey

The Josephine Meckseper Catalogue No. 1

Josephine Meckseper, The Josephine Meckseper Catalogue No. 1

Josephine Meckseper, The Josephine Meckseper Catalogue No. 1
Softcover, 64 pp., offset 4/4, 240 x 240 mm
English and German
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-933128-00-9
Published by Sternberg Press

$24.00 ·

“Politics and aesthetics morph seamlessly in a world where politics confuses itself with representation, where all attention is swallowed in the communication of a message rather than in the intensity of an event. … In Meckseper’s gallery installation, where fashion images share space with protest documentation, where an idea of relational space rubs shoulders with an idea of lifestyle or boutique design, where an idea of the social morphs into an idea of the commodity relation, many of the elements on display also double as mechanisms of display: shelves, rugs, windows, magazine covers, and wallpaper are the products here. Here, display displays itself. Covers and wrappings conceal nothing, they only reveal themselves. And, reappropriating the very mechanisms of commodity transmission in this way, and in particular by conflating politicized symbols with such functions… , by relocating non-art in art and vice versa, by this orgiastic displacement, this diabolical Feng Shui of signifying forms and materials, the artist also goes to work (like the peasant in her field, the posing model) in the production of her anti-world.”

—John Kelsey

Multiples 1982-1997

Martin Kippenberger, Multiples 1982-1997

Martin Kippenberger, Multiples 1982-1997
Softcover, 144 pp., offset 4/4, 215 x 270 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 9783883756783
Published by Walther König

$35.00 ·

This latest reference work on Kippenberger catalogues all of the multiples produced between 1982 and 1997, documented by title, year, format, motive, edition, signature, and production. Here you will find many hard-to-describe works, including Mirror Babies, ELITE ‘88, Upside Down And Turning Me, Disco Bombs, and Kippen Seltzer.

Contra Mundum I-VII

Alex Klein and Mark Owens, Contra Mundum I-VIIAlex Klein and Mark Owens, Contra Mundum I-VII

Contra Mundum I-VII
Softcover, 224 pp., offset 1/1, 140 x 220 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-9830773-0-5
Published by Oslo Editions

$18.00 ·

The inaugural volume from Oslo Editions, Contra Mundum I-VII, documents a series of talks held at the Mandrake in Los Angeles on the theme of “contra mundum” or “against the world.” Taking its cue from Evelyn Waugh’s novel Brideshead Revisited, Contra Mundum posits the world-making potential of (anti)sociality as a subject position and the value of a notion of collectivity grounded in “association without relation.” So doing, the book considers a diverse range of topics, including the furniture of Donald Judd, Private Issue New Age music, animal subjectivity, misanthropy and the trope of self-banishment in Shakespeare, apocalypticism and the zombie film, pirates from Blackbeard to Somalia, and the post-punk vocalist Mark E. Smith. Featuring contributions from artists Rupert Deese, Elad Lassry, Anthony Pearson, and Frances Stark, and critics Aaron Kunin, Matthew Taylor Raffety, and Evan Calder Williams.

Artforum 500 Words.

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.