Fucking Good Art #35: New Existentialism. Jan Verwoert. edition fink

Posted in Motto Books, writing on October 22nd, 2016
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New Existentialism
Existentialism, existential, existence … the subject is simply too large and too complex, too personal to say anything sensible.

Conversations  with Ger Groot, Alana Jelinek, and Alexandra Blättler and an essay by Jan Verwoert.

Published by Fucking Good Art and edition fink

10€
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How to (talk about) things that don’t exist. 31st São Paulo Biennial. Serralves

Posted in Exhibitions, painting, performance, politics, writing on October 4th, 2016
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How (…) things that don’t exist
How to (talk about) things that don’t exist focuses on the processes that led to the artworks and arguments in ‘How to (…) things that don’t exist — an exhibition developed out of the 31st São Pau¬lo Biennial’ presented at the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art in Porto. The publication continues the ide¬as and discussions that generated the exhibition and proposes unexpected synapses between different subject areas: Education; Reverse Colonialism; and Right to the City — Criminalization of the Poor. It includes a wide variety of texts, chronicles, lyrics, historical documents, drawings, collages, paintings, film stills and photographs many of which specifically conceived for this book by artists, curators, art historians, writ-ers, researchers, pedagogues, sociologists, urban planners, journalists, social workers and activists.

Como (falar sobre) coisas que não existem
Como (falar sobre) coisas que não existem centra‑se nos processos que conduziram as obras e discussões presentes na exposição “Como (…) coisas que não existem — uma exposição desenvolvida a partir da 31a Bienal de São Paulo” apresentada no Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Serralves no Porto. A publicação propõe sinapses inesperadas entre os diversos temas tratados: Educação; Colonialismo Invertido; e Direito a Cidade ― Criminalização da Pobreza e inclui uma variedade de textos, cronicas, letras de musicas, documentos históricos, desenhos, colagens, pinturas, fotogramas e fotografias — alguns concebidos especificamente para este livro — da autoria de artistas, curadores, historiadores de arte, escritores, investigadores, pedagogos, sociólogos, urbanistas, jornalistas, assistentes sociais e ativistas.

39.90

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Idea Car. Matthew Clifford Green. 2nd Cannons Publications & Motto Books

Posted in poetry, writing on September 20th, 2016
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Matthew Clifford Green is a young painter based in Los Angeles.

On his canvasses Matthew Clifford Green expends the material of oil paint in a near-facetious way, creating works that border the monstrous with the cartoonish. As the surface of his works mound and extend off the canvas, the act of viewership becomes tactile despite its distance, blending sight with touch. The crudeness of Green’s painting style results in works that bend the formal nature of color and the oil medium towards the realm of hyper simplicity, while carefully dodging the fine line of affected naivety.

He has already held plenty solo exhibitions.

IDEA CAR is the artist’s first book of scribbled poetry.

Published by 2nd Cannons Publications & Motto Books in an Edition of 500

20€

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1130 Fifth Avenue. Jacob Peter Kovner.

Posted in writing on August 26th, 2016
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“I walked up the marble staircase into the grandest space of the house, a large drawing room with double height ceilings and windows, which performed its role with great pomp and circumstance. It was a mixed metaphor of styles—Louis XIV, Beaux Arts, Georgian—all insisting upon resplendence. I sighed, thinking a thought I had many times before: that this house was what separated me from my father, who remained for me a perpetual arriviste. I conceded to myself that this had always been a house for new money. It would be designated as a mansion, distinct from the discreet brownstones preferred by the originary Dutch New York upper-crust. Only when the new money flushed in during the Gilded Age did mansions start getting built with ballrooms, vaulted ceilings, and glitzy stylistic affectations. This home was never meant for modesty; conspicuous consumption is part of its structural integrity.”

Framed by two academically-styled essays, the heart of 1130 Fifth Avenue is a narrative which traces Kovner’s cathartic process following the mysterious death of his billionaire father. Kovner meets a psychic who prescribes him a regimen of peculiar art therapy. This remedy brings Kovner to write a tell-all, which is met with public success. The writing of the book-in-book opens as many questions as it addresses.

1130 Fifth Avenue is a continuation of Kovner’s project, Classy. In a series of works, viewers use Kovner as an avatar to experience the problems of inherited privilege: complicity in the hegemony of the wealthy, the compromised subjectivity of not having earned what one has, and the ambivalence of inheriting a role in society.

 

€18.00

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Harun Farocki: What Ought to be Done / Was getan werden soll. Harun Farocki Institut & Motto Books.

Posted in Film, Motto Books, writing on August 16th, 2016
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In the mid-1970s, Harun Farocki wrote a two-page call programmatically entitled What Ought to Be Done, followed by a survey addressed to potential collaborators and supporters. He envisioned an institution to “organize a coalition of working people, not from an abstract understanding but from the contact points of their work.” The purpose of this institution, devoted to documentary practices, was twofold. It was “intended to collect, i.e. secure what is there,” but also “to produce, i.e. initiate what is not yet there.” In doing so, it was meant to facilitate social and collaborative processes, comprehensive and interdisciplinary studies without time pressure.

At the occasion of Farocki’s working paper, the Harun Farocki Institut, founded in 2015, historically situates Farocki’s initiative and reflects upon the proximities and differences between creating an institution in 1976 and forty years later.

The publication includes Farocki’s text, a commentary by Tom Holert, Doreen Mende and Volker Pantenburg, as well as a letter written in 1975 by documentary filmmaker Peter Nestler in response to Farocki’s circular.

Editorial responsibility: Elsa de Seynes.

€5.00

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,you asshole. Alina Lupu.

Posted in Theory, writing on August 1st, 2016
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“An intelligent and literarily written account of ‘the art of assholedom’, shining light on all-encompassing and ruthless art as/is life as represented in the acts of Kippenberger, Lee Lozano, Andy Warhol.”
– the northern committee

“Truly unapologetic assholery of which (and because) the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ remain hard to grasp – leaving those who try with nothing but a blank stare: why accelerate on a dead end street? Is there a way out – a secret, or a lie? But told by the beholder it still remains a bitter fairytale.”
– substantial times

“So there is a moral after all, despite the critique of art world mechanism that is convoluted and captivating with a discernible joy for provocation.”
– amsterdam tribune

“A voice that we can’t help but think is yet too cautious to actually touch upon the unknown knowns.”
– the moral observer book review

 

€13.00

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Petunia #7. Dorothée Dupuis. Valérie Chartrain, Lili Reynaud Dewar, Victoria Dejaco (eds.)

Posted in magazines, writing on June 1st, 2016
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THE ONLY AND FINEST ART AND ENTERTAINMENT FEMINIST MAGAZINE
WITH Caroline Mesquita, Grégoire Blunt & Emmy Skensved, Maité Garbayo, Marlie Mul, Temra Pavlovic, Amy Sillman, Dorothy Howard, Ramaya Tegegne, Philipp Timischl, Daniel Berndt, Deniz Unal, Geraldine Beck & Miriam Leonardi Frances Stark, Dorota Gawęda & Eglė Kulbokaitė Gill Karjevsky & Tali Keren, Deanna Havas & Haydée Marin-Lopez, Chanel Von Habsburg-Lothringen, Heather Guertin & Verena Dengler

5€
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mono.kultur #40 : EDMUND DE WAAL : W IS FOR WHITE. mono.kultur.

Posted in magazines, Motto Berlin store, writing on June 1st, 2016
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Edmund de Waal is a potter. His pots, plates, and vessels are the result of craft and mastership, but they are also so much more than that: they are experiments in form and function, abstractions of thoughts on silence and space, on repetition and failure, on substance and fragility, on memory contained.

Edmund de Waal is an artist. He arranges his objects in complex choreographies that are as mysterious as they are mesmerizing. Displayed in galleries and institutions worldwide, his considered installations play with architectural concerns, integrating ideas of space, light and obscurity.

Edmund de Waal is a writer. In 2010, his intimate memoir of a kind, ‘The Hare With Amber Eyes,’ intertwined the biography of a collection of netsuke figures with the biography of his family and became a surprise bestseller, winning several awards. His latest book, ‘The White Road,’ presents a highly personal and engaging research into the history of porcelain.

Whether he sculpts with words or with clay, what Edmund de Waal works with are concepts, ideas, and desires. In a body of work that is at odds with our times and yet oddly successful, his writings and objects overlap and integrate each other in an attempt to understand and transcend our complex relationship with objects and our surroundings.

In an interview with mono.kultur structured like an A-Z of notes and ideas, Edmund de Waal talked about his rules of attachment, the impossibility of repetition, and why ‘doubt’ is the most beautiful word.

Visually, the issue takes inspiration from that most perfect of materials: porcelain. Printed entirely in double-sided splendour, the two finishings of the paper – shiny gloss and smooth matt – evoke the texture of ceramics before and after glazing.

Interview by Mareike Dittmer / Artwork by Edmund de Waal / Design by Designbolaget

5€
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45 Last Words. Uta Pütz. art3.

Posted in writing on May 11th, 2016
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45 Last Words
/
Ikebana I-II
Close-Up Magic I-II
Weltraumfahrt I-IV
Arrangiert in schönen Gefäßen I

Concept: Uta Pütz
Graphic Design: Lisa Pommerenke
General editor: Sylvie Vojik

10€
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Tomb of Love, Grabkammer der Liebe. Claudia Reinhardt. Verbrecher Verlag

Posted in photography, writing on May 7th, 2016
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In my series Killing Me Softly (2004), I recreated the suicides of famous woman artists, placing myself as the model. Back then, fifteen years ago, it was the suicide of Sarah Kane which induced me to deal with the theme of suicide. In the most recent photographic work Dospar, Liebespaare (book title Tomb Of Love), i shift the attention to couples who committed suicide together. This time I solely have the position behind the camera and I work with non-professional actors, who were instructed by me, staging the death of ten couples and families.

2016

 

Price: €30.00

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