The Quick and the Dead

Peter Eleey, The Quick and the Dead

Peter Eleey, The Quick and the Dead
Hardcover, 352 pp., offset 4/1, 6.75 x 9 inches
Edition of 2000
ISBN 9780935640939
Published by Walker Art Center

$45.00 ·

Artists have always used their imaginations to see beyond visible matter — to posit other physics, other energies, new ways of conceiving the visible and new models for art — but the past century has seen an explosion of such investigations. In the fashion of a Wunderkammer, The Quick and the Dead takes stock of the 1960s and 70s legacy of experimental, or “research” art by pioneers like George Brecht, who posited objects as motionless events and asked us to consider “an art verging on the non-existent, dissolving into other dimensions,” and Lygia Clark, whose foldable sculptures sought to dissolve the boundary between inside and outside, each “a static moment within the cosmological dynamics from which we came and to which we are going.” In a series of encounters with art made strange by its expansions, contractions, inversions and implosions in time and space, The Quick and the Dead surveys more than 80 works by a global, multigenerational group of 50 artists, scientists and musicians — among them James Lee Byars, Joseph Beuys, Marcel Duchamp, Harold Edgerton, Ceal Floyer, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Pierre Huyghe, The Institute for Figuring, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Stephen Kaltenbach, On Kawara, Christine Kozlov, David Lamelas, Louise Lawler, Paul Etienne Lincoln, Mark Manders, Kris Martin, Steve McQueen, Helen Mirra, Catherine Murphy, Bruce Nauman, Rivane Neuenschwander, Claes Oldenburg, Roman Ondák, Adrian Piper, Roman Signer and Shomei Tomatsu, among many others. Includes reprints of texts by diverse luminaries such as John McPhee, Jalal Toufic, Oliver Sacks, Allan Kaprow and Robert Smithson.

The Gift

Eduardo Sarabia, The Gift

Eduardo Sarabia, The Gift
Softcover, 64 pp., offset 4/4, 7 x 9.5 inches
Edition of 2000
ISBN: 9789689056362
Published by A&R Press/Turner

$19.00 ·

A spoof on the format of SkyMall shopping magazine or any 1-800 mail-order catalog, The Gift is a survey catalog of the works of artist Eduardo Sarabia, (born in 1976) published to accompany his installation contribution to the 2008 Whitney Biennial of the same name. The installation consisted of a storeroom neatly packed with objects such as mermaid tails, horse heads, banana boxes and decorated Chinese vases-replicas of each of the artist’s works to date. For each item included in the catalogue, Sarabia invited a writer, artist, curator or critic to create a brief speculative description of it from his or her own unique perspective.

European Fields

Hans van der Meer, European Fields

Hans van der Meer, European Fields
Hardcover, 176 pp., offset 4/4, 297 x 210 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9783865212382
Published by Steidl

$30.00 ·

At the beginning of the 1995 soccer season, Hans van der Meer set out to take photographs of the game that dodged the cliched traditions of modern sports photography. In an attempt to record the sport in its original form — a field, two goals and 22 players — he sought matches at the bottom end of the amateur leagues. He avoided tight telescopic details and the hyperbole of action photography, pulled back from the central subject of the pitch, and set the playing field and its unfolding action in the context of local elements. Over the last 10 years, Van der Meer has continued this project across the playing fields of Europe, traveling to every country with a significant history of the game. The Netherlands yielded 1998’s Dutch Fields, and the odyssey that brings forth European Fields has since taken him from Bihariain, Romania to Bjàrkà, Sweden, from Torp, Norway to Als*àrs, Hungary, from Bartkowo, Poland to Beire, Portugal, and to urban and suburban Greece, Finland, England, France, Germany, Scotland, Switzerland, Holland, Slovakia, Denmark, Ireland, Wales, Belgium, Spain and Italy. Van der Meer’s understated observations of the poetry and absurdity of human behavior on the field use soccer to consider–and provoke a laugh at–the human condition.

United States 1970-1975

Jacob Holdt, United States 1970-1975

Jacob Holdt, United States 1970-1975
Hardcover, 192 pp., offset 4/4, 255 x 255 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9783865213938
Published by Steidl

$40.00 ·

In the early 1970s, Jacob Holdt left his native Denmark and arrived in the U.S. with 40 dollars in his pocket. He meant to zip through the country on his way to South America, but he was so shocked and fascinated by what he saw here that he decided to stay a while. When his family was skeptical about the poverty he described in letters home, his father shipped over a cheap amateur camera, asking for proof, and Holdt began to create this portrait of America and its underclass. In the end, he spent five years as a vagabond, selling his blood twice a week and hitch-hiking over 100,000 miles. He befriended whoever offered him a ride, and a ride frequently became an offer to stay a few days. He never said no, and in the end visited more than 350 homes, where he photographed the people he lived with: poor families, millionaires, junkies, members of the Ku Klux Klan. His images echo the work of the WPA, and have inspired Lars Van Trier among others. More recently, Holdt, who was born 1947 in Copenhagen, has been working in third-world countries, documenting the lives of those in poverty there.

Buch/Book No. 9

Hans-Peter Feldmann, Buch/Book No. 9

Hans-Peter Feldmann, Buch/Book No. 9
Hardcover, 208 pp., offset 4/4, 225 x 310 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9783865602329
Published by Walther König

$49.00 ·

Düsseldorf-based Hans-Peter Feldmann is a passionate collector of images and stories, an original thinker and one of the first conceptual artists. This is Feldmann’s most personal book, a racy parcours through images before and behind the retina: clouds and strawberries, women in graceful poses, pants that don’t fit, the longing of retired civil servants, flying people, Christmas decorations, soccer images, collections of country-code plates and much more. These images are at once common, strange, smart, stupid and human. Of his focus on the “poetic moments of the ordinary,” a 2003 review in Artforum said, “It is precisely this continual, ever-expanding reflection on and skepticism about the various functions and values of images, their truth content and modes of employment, that make Feldmann’s work now seem seminal. And his relevance to contemporary art practice derives not least from his acknowledgment of the arbitrary relationship between signifier and signified, the moments of displacement and projection inherent in every form of representation.”

Real Life Magazine: Selected Writing and Projects 1979-1994

Real Life Magazine: Selected Writing and Projects 1979-1994

Real Life Magazine: Selected Writing and Projects 1979-1994
Softcover, 320 pp., offset 1/1, 8.25 x 11 inches
Edition of 1000
ISBN 9780978869700
Published by Primary Information

$30.00 ·

Real Life Magazine: Selected Writings and Projects 1979-1994 highlights a selection of writings and artists’ projects from Real Life magazine, which was originally edited by artist, writer, and curator, Thomas Lawson and writer, Susan Morgan. Published in twenty-three issues from 1979-1994 as an intermittent black and white magazine, Real Life featured artists and art historians writing on art, media and popular culture interspersed with pictorial contributions. The development of the magazine through its 15 year history, traces the influences, development and transitions of artists through the 80s.

The anthology features writings by and about Dara Birnbaum, Eric Bogosian, Rhys Chatham, Mark Dion, Jack Goldstein, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kim Gordon, Dan Graham, Thomas Lawson, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Allan McCollum, John Miller, Dave Muller, Matt Mullican, Adrian Piper, Richard Prince, David Robbins, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, Michael Smith, John Stezaker, Bernard Tschumi, Jeff Wall, Lawrence Weiner, and James Welling among others.

Secession

Christopher Williams, Secession

Christopher Williams, Secession
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 4/duotone, 210 x 297 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9783865600417
Published by Walther König

$25.00 ·

In late 2005, Vienna’s Secession gallery exhibited work by the influential Los Angeles Conceptual artist and master of appropriated commercial imagery, Christopher Williams, alongside work by the Dutch collaborators Jeroen de Rijke and Willem de Rooij. The show was documented in two separate catalogues — one for each artist (or artist team) — and this volume presents the work of Williams only. It includes photographs of a model showcasing a shower door, cameras and camera parts, corncobs, car interiors, bicycles and other elements of the urban landscape. Viewers may be familiar with some of the work, which was featured in 2006 on the cover of Artforum. The de Rijke and de Rooij volume of this two-part catalogue is not available here.

A Torment of Follies

Frances Stark, A Torment of Follies

Frances Stark, A Torment of Follies
Softcover, 96 pp., offset 4/1, 200 x 310 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9783865604644
Published by Walther König

$40.00 ·

This exhibition catalogue disguised as an artist’s book presents recent work by the Los Angeles artist, writer and all-around favorite, Frances Stark. Taking as her starting point the novel Ferdydurke by the esteemed Polish author Witold Gombrowicz, Stark explores two key aspects of the novel, according to Andras Palffy, President of the esteemed Viennese exhibition space, Secession — “the individual’s right to uncertainty or immaturity and all possible forms of masquerade” and “deception towards one’s environment.” Whereas Gombrowicz took on the sinister political developments of 1930s Poland, Stark aptly and humorously attacks the hierarchies, systems and pigeon holes of the contemporary commercial art world. Of special note are the very effective optical illusions embedded in the images reproduced here.

The Conversation Series 15

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Enzo Mari, The Conversation Series

Hans Ulrich Obrist and Enzo Mari, The Conversation Series 15
Softcover, 88 pp., offset 4/1, 135 x 210 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 9783865604019
Published by Walther König

$25.00 ·

Volume 15 of The Conversation Series features a riveting dialogue between series editor and cultural catalyst Hans Ulrich Obrist and the renowned Italian designer Enzo Mari. More concerned with theoretical issues in design than commercial success, Mari is one of the most thoughtful and intellectually provocative designers of the late twentieth century. His work as a product and furniture designer, as well as a writer, teacher and artist, has proved influential both to his peers and to younger generations. In this volume, Mari discusses his iconic designs for cutting-edge production houses Danese, Olivetti and Castelli, his experience of the contradictory aspects of postwar Italy and his unique take on the design trends of the 1960s and 1970s.

Enzo Mari was born in 1932 in Novara, Italy. He has most recently completed a series of tubular aluminum chairs for Vienna’s Gebrüder Thonet and a collection for the Japanese home store Muji.

Negative Space

Mungo Thomson, Negative Space

Mungo Thomson, Negative Space
Softcover, 160 pp., offset 4/4, 175 x 255 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 978-3-905770-27-8
Published by JRP|Ringier, CK editions

$29.00 ·

The Negative Space project is a book made of photographs taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and inverted. As “color negatives” of outer space (stars, solar systems, galaxies, nebulae, black holes, and exotic cosmic phenomena) it maps our universe in a book form. The book had been conceived by the artist in collaboration with graphic designer Conny Purtill, on the occasion of Thomson’s exhibition at GAMEC, Bergamo.

This publication is part of the series of artists projects edited by Christoph Keller. Personally selected by Keller, for Textfield, as one of his top five from the series.

Celebration at Persepolis

Michael Stevenson, Celebration at Persepolis

Michael Stevenson, Celebration at Persepolis
Hardcover, 64 pp., offset 4/1, 125 x 160 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 978-3-905829-48-8
Published by JRP|Ringier/Arnolfini

$19.00 ·

Described as an “anthropologist of the avant-garde,” Michael Stevenson investigates the mythology that surrounds renowned and controversial events which have been significant in the spheres of both art and politics.

Stevenson revisits the site of an infamous week-long party held in 1971 by the Shah of Iran among the ruins of the ancient Persian city of Persepolis. Reconstructing part of the temporary architecture built for the celebrations (itself now a ruin), Stevenson looks at this pivotal moment in Iranian history which led toward the subsequent cultural revolution.

This publication is part of the series of artists projects edited by Christoph Keller. Personally selected by Keller, for Textfield, as one of his top five from the series.

Zeitung

Peter Piller, Zeitung

Peter Piller, Zeitung
Hardcover, 384 pp., offset 4/1, 280 x 280 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 978-3-905829-10-5
Published by JRP|Ringier, CK editions

$95.00 ·

From 1994 to 2005 Peter Piller earned his living as Head of Documentation in a big Hamburg media agency, responsible for the day-to-day analysis and archiving of over 150 regional newspapers. This activity was the springboard for his artistic work, the Peter Piller Archive. The newspaper photographs were classified according to a subjective methodology involving some 80 collection categories and assigned to a typology of picture journalism that graphically manages the grotesque mundaneness of our news culture and its visual archetypes.

This publication is the most complete compilation to date of Peter Piller’s collection of found images. More than 2000 illustrations chosen from newspapers are organized in such categories as “Touching Cars,” “Sad, Hopeless, Despair, Tristesse,” “Girls Firing Arms,” “Stand-in, Protests,” or “Man and Fire.” An improbable typology of press photography of the last decades.

This publication is part of the series of artists projects edited by Christoph Keller. Personally selected by Keller, for Textfield, as one of his top five from the series.

Cloud, the, 3

Helen Mirra, Cloud, the, 3

Helen Mirra, Cloud, the, 3
Hardcover, 304 pp., offset 4/1, 140 x 195 mm
Edition of 5000
ISBN 978-3-905770-17-9
Published by JRP|Ringier, CK editions

$45.00 ·

For the past few years Helen Mirra’s writing has been in the form of the index. Dislocated from a source text, the entries point out into the world at large. This volume relies upon John Dewey’s “Reconstruction in Philosophy” (1920). While Dewey’s book is largely about the conceptualization of ideas, Mirra’s project is a materialization of conceptualization, under the auspices of a spare poetics.

This publication is part of the series of artists projects edited by Christoph Keller. Personally selected by Keller, for Textfield, as one of his top five from the series.