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 · add to cart
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.
Art, Charlotte Cotton, Criticism, Culture, Design, Jonathan Maghen, LACMA, Phil Chang, Photography, RAM, Textfield, Typography, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department
Man Ray, La Photographie N’Est Pas L’Art
Softcover, 64 pp., offset 4/1, 160 x 245 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-3-902675-30-9
Published by Fotohof Editions
$39.00 · add to cart
Photography is not art, proclaims Man Ray in the essay re-published here as an impeccable facsimile edition of the 1937 original. A pamphlet of loose sheets and 12 images, this publication re-visits an issue that was hotly controversial during the first half of the 20th century — Is Photography Art? — as examined in the influential Paris magazine L’Art. Despite the fact that Man Ray’s provocative works were among the photographs generally agreed by critics to be, in fact, art, Man Ray himself seems barely interested in considering the question. “There’s no point trying to find out if it’s an art,” he said. “Art is a thing of the past. We need something else. You’ve got to watch light at work. It’s light that creates. I sit down in front of my sheet of photographic paper and I think.”
Art, Fotohof Editions, Man Ray, Photography, RAM
Mariana Castillo Deball and Irene Kopelman, A for Alibi
Softcover + dust jacket, 240 pp., offset 2/2, 160 x 240 mm
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-933128-33-7
Published by Sternberg Press
$29.00 · add to cart
A for Alibi explores the boundaries of scientific practice and art. The Uqbar Foundation invited a group of artists to perform research and develop projects using the impressive collection of historical instruments and optical devices. Fully illustrated, this book documents the artists’ projects as well as a symposium of the same name, where scientists and art historians lectured on the origins of modern visual culture.
Brian O’Connell, Irene Kopelman, James Beckett, Manuel Raeder, Maria Barnas, Mariana Castillo Deball, RAM, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Sternberg Press, Suchan Kinoshita, Tiemen Cocquyt, Tine Melzer, Uqbar Foundation
Dexter Sinister, Portable Document Format
Hardcover, 200 pp., offset 4/1, 4.25 x 6.75 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-933128-85-6
Published by Sternberg Press
$20.00 · add to cart
Over the past few years, Dexter Sinister has been interested in exploring contemporary publishing in its broadest, most exploded sense. The first part of this book consists of pieces of writings written since the conception of their New York basement workshop and bookstore in the summer of 2006. These writings were previously published online as PDFs in the Library at www.dextersinister.org. They were primarily written by Dexter Sinister or by one of a circle of regular collaborators, often for their house journal
Dot Dot Dot, or as supplements to other books or exhibitions.
The second part consists of reproductions of a series of lithographic proof prints. Accompanying these prints are extended captions individually produced for different exhibitions in 2008. Each caption was composed in line with the manner of its accompanying image. Although never intended as a set, a number of generic themes emerged, such as abstraction, mathematics, logic, and cooperation. The book intends to demonstrate how ideas from the first part have been rechannelled in the second.
Anthony Huberman, David Reinfurt, David Senior, Dexter Sinister, Edgar Allan Poe, Giles Weaver, Louis Kaplan, RAM, Rob Giampietro, Seth Price, Sternberg Press, Stuart Bailey, Walead Beshty
Josephine Meckseper, The Josephine Meckseper Catalogue
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 · add to cart
“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
Andrew Ross, Art, Design, Fashion, John Kelsey, Josephine Meckseper, RAM, Sternberg Press
Slavs and Tatars & Ooga Booga present the west coast debut of Kidnapping Mountains. Featuring a selection and sale of Slavs and Tatars posters, editions, and printed matter.
Ooga Booga
943 N Broadway #203
Los Angeles CA 90012
14 January — 7 February 2010
Exhibitions, Ooga Booga, RAM, Slavs and Tatars
Pages 7, In Translation
Softcover, 88 pp., offset 1/1, 200 x 260 mm
English and Farsi
Edition of 2000
ISSN 1583-3165
ISBN 978-90-5973-099-1
Published by Pages
$20.00 · add to cart
This is the seventh annual issue of Pages, a publication that serves as a public discourse between the academic community in the West and Iran. The editors of Pages were inspired to scrutinize the various aspects of translation because they confront it with every issue of their journal. “There is clearly no such thing as a perfect substitute in translation,” the editors write. “There are instead displacements and interpretations, which remain nevertheless within the limits of the text.” An instance of cultural practice and political agency, translation does more than create a space between languages or among cultures. An innovative look at how translation affects the spatial and political arrangements of public and private spaces of cities, as communal or individual identities, in representations of state media, and in artistic practice itself.
Afarin Azad, Art, Babak Afrassiabi, Criticism, Culture, Nasrin Tabatabai, Pages, RAM, Steve Rushton
Wilhelm Hein, You Killed the Underground Film or the Real Meaning of Kunst bleibt… bleibt…
Softcover, 120 pp., offset 1/1, 150 x 210 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-3-00-020345-9
Published by Passenger Books
$25.00 · add to cart
The texts in this book relate to Wilhelm Hein’s eponymous film project, which he has been working on since 1989. The film now comprises about 15 hours of 16mm film, in black-and-white and color. “Wilhelm Hein demands that the viewer of his film be free of any preconceived idea of cinema,” writes critic Cecile Chich in the first of two excellent essays on this epic work-in-progress. The book also includes black and white photos, a lengthy interview with the German auteur and a filmography. Includes texts by Cécile Chich and Marc Siegel, an interview with Wilhelm Hein and photographs by Annette Frick.
Annette Frick, Art, Cecile Chich, Film, Marc Siegel, Passenger Books, RAM, Wilhelm Hein
Jim Shaw, Dreams
Softcover, 288 pp., offset 1/1, 6 x 8 inches
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-0-9646426-0-7
Published by Smart Art Press
$30.00 · add to cart
Most people consider their dreams private property — too personal, too scary, and too weird to share — but not internationally renowned Los Angeles artist Jim Shaw. In Dreams, a monumental compendium of painstaking pencil drawings that bring his nocturnal dream world to life, the artist unflinchingly reveals his innermost fears, obsessions, and sexual fantasies. A diarylike picture book, Dreams is an in-depth look at one of the most important facets of this seminal artist’s work.
Jim Shaw, RAM, Smart Art Press
Jim Shaw, Everything Must Go
Softcover, 150 pp., offset 4/1, 8.25 x 10 inches
English and French
Edition of 2000
ISBN 2-919893-23-8
Published by Smart Art Press
$25.00 · add to cart
A survey of his career from 1974 to the present, Everything Must Go is the first catalogue to incorporate the full range of Jim Shaw’s profoundly original and idiosyncratic work. From the massive 170-piece multimedia work My Mirage to his Thrift Store Paintings, Dream Drawings, and Dream Objects, Shaw has created a fantastic visual narrative that references diverse outside sources, moments of personal history, and fragments of our collective cultural consciousness. His highly individualized “outsider” perspective has established Shaw as a seminal figure in Europe and the United States, and he has contributed significantly to the influence of Los Angeles in the international art community. Essays by Amy Gerstler, Doug Harvey, Mike Kelley, Noëllie Roussel, and Fabrice Stroun.
Amy Gerstler, Art, Doug Harvey, Fabrice Stroun, Jim Shaw, Mike Kelley, Noëllie Roussel, RAM, Smart Art Press
Lewis Baltz, The New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California
Hardcover/slipcase, 112 pp., offset 1/duotone, 285 x 275 mm
English and German
Edition of 2000
ISBN 0-9630785-6-9
Published by RAM, Steidl
$55.00 · add to cart
Lewis Baltz, with his iconic, minimalist photos of suburban landscape, is considered the founder of the New Topographics movement. Reproduced for the first time, his earliest portfolio, The Tract Houses (1971), and his preliminary forays into a minimal aesthetic, The Prototype Works (1967-1976), illuminate Baltz’s drive to capture the reality of a sprawling Western ecology gone wild. Together with The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, this trilogy reveals the indelible importance of Baltz in the development of contemporary photography. “Baltz turned his camera on the virtually featureless built environment of California … He pushed his compositions to an astringent minimum,” writes curator Sheryl Conkelton in an informative essay.
Art, Lewis Baltz, Photography, RAM, Sheryl Conkelton, Steidl, Whitney Museum
Lewis Baltz, The Prototype Works
Hardcover, 112 pp., offset 1/tritone, 285 x 275 mm
English and German
Edition of 2000
ISBN 0-9703860-5-2
Published by RAM, Steidl
$70.00 · add to cart
Lewis Baltz, with his iconic, minimalist photos of suburban landscape, is considered the founder of the New Topographics movement. Reproduced for the first time, his earliest portfolio, The Tract Houses (1971), and his preliminary forays into a minimal aesthetic, The Prototype Works (1967-1976), illuminate Baltz’s drive to capture the reality of a sprawling Western ecology gone wild. Together with The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, this trilogy reveals the indelible importance of Baltz in the development of contemporary photography. “Baltz turned his camera on the virtually featureless built environment of California … He pushed his compositions to an astringent minimum,” writes curator Sheryl Conkelton in an informative essay.
Art, Lewis Baltz, Photography, RAM, Sheryl Conkelton, Steidl, Whitney Museum
Lewis Baltz, The Tract Houses
Hardcover, 68 pp., offset 1/tritone, 285 x 275 mm
English and German
Edition of 2000
ISBN 0-9703860-4-4
Published by RAM, Steidl
$65.00 · add to cart
Lewis Baltz, with his iconic, minimalist photos of suburban landscape, is considered the founder of the New Topographics movement. Reproduced for the first time, his earliest portfolio, The Tract Houses (1971), and his preliminary forays into a minimal aesthetic, The Prototype Works (1967-1976), illuminate Baltz’s drive to capture the reality of a sprawling Western ecology gone wild. Together with The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California, this trilogy reveals the indelible importance of Baltz in the development of contemporary photography. “Baltz turned his camera on the virtually featureless built environment of California … He pushed his compositions to an astringent minimum,” writes curator Sheryl Conkelton in an informative essay.
Art, Lewis Baltz, Photography, RAM, Sheryl Conkelton, Steidl, Whitney Museum
Mariana Castillo DeBall, These Ruins You See
Hardcover, 272 pp. + insert, offset 4/1, 155 x 225 mm
English and Spanish
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-933128-46-7
Published by Sternberg Press
$30.00 · add to cart
An amazing book containing a collection of found objects and exhumed artifacts, contemporary and historical illustrations along with thought provoking essays, all looking at the changing ways Mexico has told the story of its past. The various layers of Mexico’s archaeology are forever present, giving rise to continual interpretations, reconstructions, demolitions, and annexations. This volume, based on a number of exhibitions, publications and lectures, brings together the history of collections and exhibitions of pre-Columbian objects, as well as the manufacture of replicas, the shadowy world of forgers and the relocation of key objects, among related themes. This eclectic grouping of ideas brings into sharp relief the ideological baggage and the range of museographic practices that always and inevitably frame our perception of these objects and artifacts.
Hannes Gloor, Manuel Raeder, Mariana Castillo Deball, RAM, Sternberg Press
Aleksandra Mir, Corporate Mentality
Softcover, 256 pp., offset 4/1, 230 x 300 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 0-9711193-1-7
Published by Sternberg Press
$40.00 · add to cart
Calling for a reassessment of the function of art in late capitalist society,
Corporate Mentality focuses on the complex and ambiguous ways artistic production inhabits corporate processes, abandoning the autonomy of the artwork in order to elaborate resistant approaches to a world increasingly determined by commercial strategies and market concerns.
Based on an archive (1995–2001) maintained by Aleksandra Mir, it presents a diverse spectrum of artists who take on business as site, as material, and as subject of their work. As Will Bradley writes in frieze, “The book focuses on … an essential area of interest as artists wake up to the reality of the Clinton-era fantasy of ethical corporatism. The plan came out of Mir and Kelsey’s realization that the publicity industry wasn’t stealing artists’ ideas, but simply employing artists, like Mir herself, who needed a day job. ‘Radical’ aesthetics that had taken at least six months to travel (we’re in New York here) from downtown to uptown were now transferred almost instantaneously, causing artists to reassess their methods.”
Absolute Vodka, Anthony Davies, Art, Atelier van Lieshout, Bennett Simpson, Bernadette Corporation, Carey Young, Claude Closky, Daniel Pflumm, Dejanov & Heger, Gareth James, John Kelsey, Lars Bang Larsen, Laura K. Jones, Liam Gillick, Matthieu Laurette, Piotr Uklanski, Purple Institute, RAM, Simon Ford, Sternberg Press, Superflex, Will Bradley
Noah Horowitz and Brian Sholis, The Uncertain States of America Reader
Softcover, 204 pp., offset 1/1, 155 x 255 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-933128-21-4
Published by Sternberg Press
$35.00 · add to cart
What do artists read? What articles, books, reviews — and cartoons, cookbooks, memoirs and film scripts — influence their work? Here are some answers from the participating artists in the Uncertain States of America exhibition in Oslo and London in 2005. This book, a companion to the exhibition catalog, is an eclectic compilation of material that gives the reader a deeper insight into the influences that created the show. From Dora Apel’s Art Journal article on Torture Culture to Giorgio Agamben’s Le Monde piece on his refusal to visit the United States because he will not allow electronic archiving of his fingerprints, this is a thought-provoking reader for our times. Contributions by Julian Stallabrass, Johanna Burton, Isabelle Graw, Andrea Fraser, Pamela M. Lee, Miwon Kwon, Matthew Jesse Jackson, Jack Bankowsky, Chris Kraus, David Barringer, Bernadette Corporation, Seth Price, Kirk Varnedoe, Tim Griffin, Ralph Rugoff, Matt Wolf, Hamza Walker, Paul Chan, Giorgio Agamben, Critical Art Ensemble, Gregory Sholette, Alan Gilbert, Robert Morris, Iain Boal, T.J. Clark, Joseph Matthews, Michael Watts, Dora Apel, Kymberly N. Pinder, Molly Nesbit, Trisha Donnelly.
Andrea Fraser, Art, Bernadette Corporation, Chris Kraus, Critical Art Ensemble, David Barringer, Dora Apel, Giorgio Agamben, Gregory Sholette, Hamza Walker, Isabelle Graw, Jack Bankowsky, Johanna Burton, John Bowe, Julian Stallabrass, Kirk Varnedoe, Kymberly N. Pinder, Matt Wolf, Matthew Jesse Jackson, Miwon Kwon, Molly Nesbit, Paul Chan, Ralph Rugoff, RAM, Retort, Robert Morris, Seth Price, Sternberg Press, Tim Griffin, Trisha Donnelly
Thomas Eggerer, Atrium
Softcover, 72 pp., offset 4/1, 215 x 270 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-0-9726806-9-1
Published by Sternberg Press
$30.00 · add to cart
“How can one make a work on canvas today without, in some way, addressing the mobility that now characterizes our most familiar sources of representational surfaces – the television or computer screen with their profusion of data, succeeding, interrupting and, through the hyperlink, opening gaps within one another? Thomas Eggerer’s anti-gravitational paintings address these conditions in a variety of ways, all of which cause a vertiginous loss of grounding.” David Joselit
German artist Thomas Eggerer (*1963) is based in Los Angeles since 1999. A former member of the collaborative Group Material in New York, he initiated conceptual projects in collaboration with Jochen Klein, focusing on identity and gender issues in public space. In his current paintings and drawings, Eggerer continues this discourse with other means. His enigmatic depictions of groups and collectives attempt less to portray the singularity of the individual than to explore the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion, conformity and hierarchy, as well as the potential of individual or collective utopia.
Art, David Joselit, Diedrich Diederichsen, Karola Grässlin, Kunstverein Braunschweig, RAM, Sternberg Press, Thomas Eggerer
Bernadette Corporation, Eine Pinot Grigio, Bitte
Softcover, 150 pp., offset 4/1, 165 x 240 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN: 978-1-933128-17-7
Published by Sternberg Press
$25.00 · add to cart
Formed in 1994, the Bernadette Corporation is a creative collective based in New York and Europe and organized around revolving memberships and associations. Its artistic output has ranged from fashion to film and literature, training videos, photography, etc., consistently insisting on the idea that the re-imagined format should inform the subject and give shape to its output. Whereas the first book released by BC was reportedly written by 150 people, in an “exquisite corpse” format, the second “novel,” entitled Be Corpse, is described as “a screenplay that cannot be a film” or “a film that can only be on paper.” A drama in three acts, the text seeks to make the gap between our primordial and contemporary selves collapse on itself, revealing an instinctless body and the brain manifest as the over-stimulated observer. Above all, Be Corpse should be received as the continuation of BC’s indirect, fiercely independent critique of our late capitalist/globalized world.
Art, Bernadette Corporation, Book Works, Fashion, Film, RAM, Sternberg Press
Olivia Plender, A Stellar Key to the Summerland
Softcover, 112 pp., offset 1/1, 140 x 180 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN: 978-1-870699-86-0
Published by Book Works
$30.00 · add to cart
British artist Olivia Plender’s work is based in historical research, finding idiosyncratic and little-known events, “peculiar pockets of forgotten history that sit awkwardly with the way we live now,” as one observer comments. Her new graphic novel takes us to another of those pockets, the Modern Spiritualist Movement, which began in 1848, a heady mixture of non-conformist religion, politics and popular entertainment presented as a scientific response to the newly industrialized world. The movement’s working-class base linked it to political campaigns, particularly the anti-slavery movement and the campaign for women’s suffrage. By acting as mediums, women found a unique opportunity to give political speeches — in the guise of channeling a spirit — without transgressing social boundaries. Plender, who was a participant in the 2006 Tate Triennial, mimics the techniques of 19th-century pamphlets and combines spiritualist ephemera with interviews in this absorbing work. Part of Book Works Singular Sociology Series.
Art, Book Works, Olivia Plender, RAM
Maria Fusco and Ian Hunt, Put About: A Critical Anthology on Independent Publishing
Softcover, 194 pp., offset 4/1, 190 x 255 mm
Edition of 2000
SBN: 1-870699-70-X
Published by Book Works
$40.00 · add to cart
Put About: A Critical Anthology on Independent Publishing presents a timely discussion about independent publishing and publishing by artists, focusing on books where the makers keep control of every aspect of production through to distribution. Combining an interest in what and why publishers and artists feel compelled to deliver such materials, together with the economic models, audience and networks of association that can give independent productions a wider cultural presence, this book features a broad range of written and visual pieces alongside ‘case-studies’ from a selection of contemporary international publishers. Contributors include: John Baldessari, Simon Bedwell, Michael Bracewell, Andrea Brady, Cabinet Magazine, Bonnie Camplin, Maurizio Cattelan, David Dibosa, Matthew Higgs, Stewart Home, Lucy Lippard, Emily King, Gunilla Klingberg, Jakob Kolding, John Miller, Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky, Aleksandra Mir, Stéphanie Moisdon, David Osbaldeston, Raymond Pettibon, Lynne Tillman, Nicolas Trembley, and Axel John Wieder.
Aleksandra Mir, Andrea Brady, Art, Axel John Wieder, Bonnie Camplin, Book Works, Cabinet Magazine, Criticism, David Dibosa, David Osbaldeston, Design, Emily King, Gunilla Klingberg, Ian Hunt, Jakob Kolding, John Baldessari, John Miller, Lucy Lippard, Lynne Tillman, Maria Fusco, Matthew Higgs, Maurizio Cattelan, Michael Bracewell, Nicolas Trembley, RAM, Raymond Pettibon, Simon Bedwell, Stéphanie Moisdon, Stewart Home, Stuart Bailey
Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, Folk Archive
Softcover, 158 pp., offset 4/4, 170 x 240 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 1-870699-81-5
Published by Book Works
$35.00 · add to cart
“If Pop Art is about liking things, as Andy Warhol said, then folk art is about loving things,” Jeremy Deller. This is a book about the creative life of Britain and the first attempt since the Festival of Britain to document the popular and folk art of the present day. Organized by Jeremy Deller and Alan Kane, Folk Archive: Contemporary Popular Art from the UK, presents a personal selection of objects and actions, containing elements of ambition, humour, pathos and resistance, which present us with invaluable evidence of life in Britain today.
Alan Kane, Art, Book Works, Jeremy Deller, RAM
Slavs and Tatars, Kidnapping Mountains
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 4/1, 20 x 26 cm
Edition of 1250
ISBN 978-1-906012-19-9
Published by Book Works
$32.00 · add to cart
Kidnapping Mountains is a playful and informative exploration of the muscular stories, wills, and defeat inhabiting the Caucasus region. The book is comprised of two parts: an eponymous section addressing the complexity of languages and identities on the fault line of Eurasia, and Steppe by Steppe Romantics, a restoration of the region’s seemingly reactionary approaches to romance.
Art, Book Works, Boy Vereecken, Criticism, Culture, Design, Gerrie van Noord, Graphics, Jane Rolo, Kasia Korczak, Payam Sharifi, RAM, Slavs and Tatars, Typography, Victoria Camblin
Shannon Ebner, The Sun As Error
Hardcover, 64 pp., offset 4/1, 11 x 14.5 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-0-87587-200-1
Published by LACMA
$65.00 · add to cart
The Los Angeles based artist Shannon Ebner extends her exploration of photography, sculpture and language in this remarkable book,
The Sun as Error. In collaboration with Dexter Sinister (design duo David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey),
The Sun as Error re-investigates the meaning and language of photographs, creating both an open-ended reading of her practice and also rethinking the idea of an artist’s monograph. Far from straightforward, the book interweaves her bodies of work, previously unseen one-off pieces, with the language of technical diagrams, optical illusions, and graphic design. One of the persistent motifs through the book’s sequence is an asterisk and, specifically, one imbued with the legacy of the graphic designer Muriel Cooper. As the first design director for MIT Press and the cofounder of the Visible Language Workshop, Cooper’s legacy for reorienting and repositioning the direction of an artist’s monograph is imaginatively explored in the creative partnership of Dexter Sinister and Shannon Ebner.
Shannon Ebner’s work has been shown in exhibitions including Trace at The Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria (2006), The 2006 California Biennial at The Orange County Museum of Art, Uncertain States of America, at The Serpentine Gallery, London (2006), Learn to Read, at the Tate Modern, London (2007), and the 2008 Whitney Biennial at The Whitney Museum of American Art.
Art, Charlotte Cotton, Dexter Sinister, Graphics, LACMA, Photography, RAM, Shannon Ebner, Stuart Bailey, Theory, Typography, Wallis Annenberg Photography Department
Bless, Celebrating 10 Years of Themelessness, Nº00 — Nº29
Softcover, 496 pp., offset 4/1 + fore-edge printing, 185 x 250 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-933128-15-3
Published by Sternberg Press
out of print
Bless came to fame in the winter of 97/98, when the models of a Martin Margiela fashion show wore Bless wigs made out of fur. Heralded as one of fashion’s most innovative designers, the Paris and Berlin-based duo (Desiree Heiss and Ines Kaag) quickly refused to capitalize on one milieu. Constantly investigating the boundaries of style, Bless slides from fashion to beauty, interior decoration to art exhibition, collaboration with other brands to stylized advertising. Their production, which sits on the fine line between art object and design, high function and high fashion, is always unique and marked by the recycling and adaptation of unexpected items put to use in a totally new way.
Designed by Manuel Raeder, this fully illustrated book features for the first time the wide range of Bless’ activity and documents a unique mode of cultural production.
Bless have exhibited internationally at the 1st berlin biennale (1998/99), Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1999), Centre Pompidou (2000), Manifesta 4 (2002), Palais de Tokyo (2003), Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2004), and most recently at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2006). Their collaborations with other brands range from Adidas to Levi’s, Nike, Mikli and Droog over to the jewellery designer Bucherer.
Adriano Sack, Art, Barbara Steiner, Bless, Culture, Design, Desiree Heiss, Elein Fleiss, Fashion, Graphics, Ines Kaag, Manuel Raeder, Nakako Hayashi, Olivier Zahm, RAM, Stéphanie Moisdon, Sternberg Press, Thimo te Duits, Typography, Ulf Poschardt
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