A new art school? Statements by 30 artists, writers and architects.

Over the past two decades, Berlin’s growth into an international art metropolis has brought many people to the city. A number of these imports teach art – seemingly in all other cities but Berlin. The city’s two schools providing full-scale arts education – the Universität der Künste (UdK) and the Hochschule Berlin Weissensee – were established long before 1989.

Since 2006, if not before, discussions about the UdK’s organizational and administrative politics have flared up – generated, for one, by the stepping down of Stan Douglas and Daniel Richter as professors, a development the UdK attempted to atone for by appointing prominent professors such as Olafur Eliasson (whose assignment though ends March 2014). Weissensee has seen an outflow of professors with international profiles to teaching posts in other cities – Karin Sander has taught in Zurich since 2007, Katharina Grosse in Düsseldorf since 2010 – and the school has gone the way of appointing guest professors and lecturers.

Reputations, ratings and capacities for reform aside, the question still presents itself whether Berlin, given its manifold art scene, is in need of new models and directions for its art education. In 2006–7, the one-year temporary project unitednationsplaza underscorred the city’s desire for an informal art school mediating its larger, international art discourse.

Does the current situation suffice? If not, what form would a new institute ideally take? frieze d/e asked Monica BONVICINI, Helmut DRAXLER, Tom HOLERT and Robert KUDIELKA for extended responses to these questions. A set of additional artists and theorists also contributed shorter statements.

Finally, six artists and architects – Roger BUNDSCHUH, Eva GRUBINGER, Sabine HORNIG, Michelle HOWARD, KUEHN MALVEZZI, and Studio MIESSEN – were asked to submit concrete drafts for the design and structure of a new art academy.

And much more…

Editors: Matthew Slotover, Amanda Sharp
Language: German / English
Pages: 158

Price: €8.50
Buy it

Erik Steinbrecher – New Paintings @ Motto Berlin
02-28.03.2013

The book “Watercolors” is documenting a one and a half year long correspondence in form of watercolors sent via email between Natalie Häusler and David Horvitz.

D 24€

Buy it

Print Response is a series of prints that were altered by various artists whom Burnoski had approached by mail or in person.
In his request to the artists, Burnoski left it open to what could be done in response to the print, saying only that it could be as simple as they wished.

The artists include:
John Baldessari, Pierre Bismuth, Martin Boyce, Herbert Brandl, Angela Bulloch, Martin Creed, Richard Deacon, Jimmie Durham, Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset, Valie Export, Peter Fischli, Ryan Gander, Joe Goode, Rodney Graham, Wade Guyton, Mary Heilmann, Isabell Heimerdinger, Carmen Herrera, Susan Hiller, Thomas Hirschhorn, Jenny Holzer, Joan Jonas, Jannis Kounellis, Louise Lawler, Paul McCarthy, Jonathan Monk, François Morellet, Olivier Mosset, Marcel Odenbach, Albert Oehlen, Roman Ondák, Tobias Rehberger, Allen Ruppersberg, Ed Ruscha, Anri Sala, Roman Signer, Nedko Solakov, Stephanie Taylor, Jeffrey Vallance, Kelley Walker, Lawrence Weiner, Christopher Williams & Johannes Bendzulla, Jack Youngerman, Heimo Zobernig

Print Response, 2012
by Christian Burnoski
Designed by Daria Holme

Special Edition of 50 + 10 AP includes a DVD titled “Put It Back Together – Tape It Together” 49 mins (A film of Paul McCarthy’s response being taped back together.)
Buy it

Limited Edition of 200 + 50 AP
Buy it

Painting — The Implicit Horizon documents a symposium which took place at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands. The book presents essays and transcripts of discussions between European and American artists, art historians, and critics who have looked at some of the ways painting has been conceived of in the eras after Conceptual Art. Addressing ideas of production and consumption, critiques of the end of art, issues of age, accomplishment, and the myth of the painter, the book posits that painting, as a working practice as well as a historical referent, serves as an implicit horizon or limit condition for other media.
“Jimson lives in a ramshackle houseboat on the Thames river, where he reminisces about the days when the state collected his paintings, hides from the police (who pursue him for his minor infractions and debts) and schemes about how to extract money from various wealthy patrons. That is, his struggles are conceptual, material and financial and always involve a race against time and an acknowledgement of his own limitations even in light of his successes. After a series of roguish scrapes, he finally receives a retrospective at Tate Britain: a triumph that does little to alleviate his destitution. But the film’s dénouement comes when Jimson paints a “monument to England”: a giant mural representing “The last Judgment” on the side of a bombed-out church aided by a cadre of voluntary art student assistants who he keeps remunerated in cups of coffee. The film ends when Jimson — threatened by council developers looking to capitalize on the land — voluntarily bulldozes his mural in advance of the city bureaucrats and sails off down the Thames in search of a new horizon: perhaps another, larger wall (or a further expansion of painting as such).”

Contributors:
Carol Armstrong, Warren Carter, Helmut Draxler, Kerstin Stakemeier, Elisabeth Lebovici, Esther Leslie, Avigail Moss, Ulrike Müller, Dierk Schmidt, and Amy Sillman.

Published by Jan van Eyck Academie

D 10€

Buy it

A Toast to the Ghost, the Host, Michael Van den Abeele.

“RENDER ME REAL. Millions of computers are rendering in the night; rendering everything more real, more realistic; rendering a new generation of extraterrestrials looking more real that the ones before; a new generation of dinosaurs, now feathered but covered in fur soon enough, if current rendering is done; of evil midget-like creatures; of astonishing landscapes covered with paramount super-structures and populated by the millions; a new generation of things as yet indescribable, but imperatively more real and convincing than before. The real is chased after like a deer; like the hunter that changed into a deer, now chased by his own dogs…”

Includes a conversation between Michael Van den Abeele and Dennis Cooper.

Published on the occasion of Un-Scene II (exposition June 2012) at Wiels, Centre for Contemporary Art.

D 15 €

Buy it

Apperception, Daan van Golden.

From the early geometric abstraction to the recent series of silhouette paintings, passing through photographic works and ephemera never printed before, Apperception offers a comprehensive gathering of Daan van Golden’s work to date. It also includes a list of his work, arranged by medium and chronologically, and the collections that hold them. With essays by Devrim Bayar, Sven Lütticken and Erik Thys.

Daan van Golden was born in 1936 in Rotterdam. He lives & works in Schiedam, The Netherlands.

Roma Publication 182. Design: Inge Ketelers

D 40 €

Buy it

Mono.Kultur #31. Michaël Borremans: Shades of Doubt.

D 5€

Buy

Abstract Ilona. Kavi Gupta Gallery.

Sixty-eight-page catalog documenting the Abstract Ilona exhibition at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Berlin. Complete with over 48 color reproductions and introductory essay by gallery director Marc LeBlanc.

With work by: Tim Berresheim, Henry Butzer, Henning Strassburger, Aribert von Ostrowski.

Designed by Enver Hadzijaj and printed in 2012.

English / German

Edition of 500.

D 25€

Buy it

BUS. Uri Aran. Morava Books.

The works of New York based artist Uri Aran take on the character of a many-layered collection of poems. Uri’s drawing technique is based on the precise repetition of a particular series of gestures: drawing-scanning-printing. The book “BUS” is simply the next phase in reproducing the “original”. Uri’s first artbook is full of images, but really it traces the “poetry of the road”.
As we open the book, hopping on the “BUS and settling into a seat in the back, the reader starts to take note of the images and messages that appear, observing from a distance. Heroes come and go, we hear fragments of private stories and bits of news from around the world. At every stop, absurd situations take place at a regular pace, but eventually the initial chaos is ordered into a multitude of meanings.

D 20 €

Buy it