Textfield, Inc. » Sternberg Press

Rich Texts: Selected Writing for Art

Textfield — Fri, 18 Feb 2011 00:19:50 +0000

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 ·

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.

The Josephine Meckseper Catalogue No. 2

Textfield — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:12:57 +0000

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

Textfield — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 16:11:24 +0000

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

Lapdogs of the Bourgeoisie (Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art)

Textfield — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 04:15:19 +0000

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

Textfield — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 04:03:48 +0000

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

Textfield — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 03:52:18 +0000

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.

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

Textfield — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 20:29:40 +0000

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

The Uncertain States of America Reader

Textfield — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:47:52 +0000

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 ·

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.

Retrospective Home Nº30 — Nº41

Textfield — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 18:56:30 +0000

Bless, Retrospective Home Nº30 — Nº41
Softcover, 416 pp., offset 4/4, 185 x 250 mm
Edition of 2000
ISBN 978-1-934105-12-2
Published by Sternberg Press

$45.00 ·

Heralded as one of fashion’s most innovative designers, the Paris and Berlin-based duo BLESS (Désirée Heiss and Ines Kaag) refuse to capitalize on any one milieu, and instead explore the differences between and the mixing of the systems of art, fashion, and design. This book brings together visual and written documentation of BLESS’s last twelve collections (N° 30-N° 41), continually prompting and challenging the question of where a product begins and ends. Their latest project, N° 41 Retroperspective Home, culminates in an exhibition / intervention of the same title at the Kunsthaus.” The hybrid nature of [BLESS’s] output cries out to be tackled by an institution like ours,” state the curators of the exhibition,” but at the same time makes it very difficult to do so … This is precisely where the challenge of our exhibition lies, seeing art as design and fashion as architecture.”

Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice

Textfield — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 18:43:29 +0000

Iaspis Forum on Design and Critical Practice — The Reader
Softcover, 445 pp., offset 4/1, 125 x 210 mm
English and Swedish
Edition of 1000
ISBN 978-1-933128-63-4
Published by Sternberg Press and Iaspis

$25.00 ·

What happens when you look at design as something more than a service-based relationship between client and designer? What new strategies and models help to question and challenge the limits of design? The second publication from the Swedish design think-tank Iaspis, this idea-packed reader focuses on investigative, speculative, and critically oriented design, especially how design relates to architecture. Inspired by an exhibition produced by the Architectural Association in London, the reader is based on four conversations between graphic designers about various aspects of design relating to their practices. It also contains a number of interviews and other texts linked to these conversations, and a broader discussion about design and transboundary practice.