ARCHITECTURAL WORKS BY OFFICE FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: THE INCOMPLETE RATIONALISM OF OFFICE KERSTEN GEERS DAVID VAN SEVEREN.

Die Publikation stellt die Projekte von OFFICE durch eine kritische Analyse auf der Grundlage von Archivdokumenten vor und rekonstruiert den Einfluß der kreativen Prinzipien von OFFICE auf die neuen Architektengeneration. Die OFFICE-Projekte wurde in den frühen 2000er Jahren erstmals wahrgenommenund erlangten als neue Formen der digitalen Collage mit kulturellem Engagement große Bekanntheit. Der Autor zeichnet die Entwicklung ihrer frühen Ideen, die als Papierarchitektur entwickelt wurden, bis hin zu den heutigen Gebäuden von erheblicher Größe und Präsenz nach. Das dem Buch zugrunde liegende Argument zeigt die Fähigkeit von OFFICE, in jedem Projekt den Funken einer theoretischen Konstruktion zu bewahren, die in den meisten Fällen nach einer rigorosen Ökonomie der Mittel ausgeführt wird. Selbst die neuen Denkmäler für öffentliche Einrichtungen werden weiterhin von einer kreativen Spannung radikaler Überlegenheit erhellt. ***** This book presents OFFICE projects through a critical analysis based on archive documents. It also reconstructs the influence of OFFICE’s creative principles among the new generations of architects. The OFFICE projects appeared in the early 2000s and gained prominence as new forms of digital collage with a cultural engagement. The author traces the evolution of their early ideas developed as paper architecture to the current buildings of a significant scale and presence. The underlying argument of the book demonstrates OFFICE’s ability to preserve in every project the spark of a theoretical construction, which in most cases is carried out according to a rigorous economy of means. Even the new monuments for public institutions continue to be illuminated by a creative tension of radical superiority.

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Catalogue published on the occasion of the retrospective exhibition devoted to the artist Mike Kelley, Ghost and Spirit, presented at the Bourse de Commerce (Paris) from 13 October 2023 to 19 February 2024, in collaboration with the Tate Modern (London).

One of the most influential artists of the late 20th century, Mike Kelley is an unclassifiable visionary who has explored notions that are still at the heart of contemporary debates: collective and individual memory, gender and social class relations, conflicting tastes, etc. The Detroit-born artist is interested in the way in which individual subjectivity is shaped by family and institutional power structures in post-modern capitalist American society.

In his performances, drawings, sculptures, paintings, installations and videos, he has consistently portrayed the role of the artist and the way in which the artist appears and disappears, like a ghost or spirit whose influence persists through the ages.

With texts by John C. Welchman, Laura López Paniagua, Cauleen Smith, Suzanne Lacy, Catherine Wood, Jean-Marie Gallais, Glenn Phillips, Fiontán Moran, Jack Halberstam, Marie de Brugerolle and Hendrik Folkerts.

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Display ist kein objekt, keine skulptur. Architektur oder performance display ist objekt, skulptur. Architektur und performance. Display bewegt sich zwischen kunst. handwerk und design. Display ist modularer rahmen und container. Display ist immer eine zusammenarbeit. Display ist plattform und gegenüber für interaktionen. Display macht unsichtbare strukturen und prozesse greifbar und dokumentiert gleichzeitig diesen vorgang. display ermöglicht wechselseitiges betrachten. ohne zu beschreiben. display nutzt kurzfristige verhältnisse. Display ist ein archiv der gegenwart. display ist werkzeug und macht raum zur werkstatt. Display baut alternativen raum. Display ist mein verständnis von kunst. display bedeutet für mich freundschaft und netzwerk. supportstruktur und suche nach handlungspotenzial. Display ist reaktion auf ökonomische zwänge des kunstbetriebs und der kunstproduktion. display ist ein anti-monument.

DISPLAY 2022 – 2016 gibt Einblicke in Paula Gehrmanns bewusst offene und auf Kooperation angelegte künstlerische Praxis. Die darin vorgestellten Arbeiten und Texte thematisieren das Verhältnis zwischen Kunst und Design, Inklusion und Assistenz und dem Handlungsspielraum künstlerischer und kuratorischer Rahmung.

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Dozie Kanu’s „Cordyceps Gaud Adversary” is the first comprehensive publication that contextualizes and traces his artistic practice of the last four years in relation to the notion of Black material culture, the theatricality of exhibition-making and his understanding of contemporary sculpture.

The publication is published on the occasion of Dozie Kanu’s exhibition at Neuer Essener Kunstverein and and includes, in addition to a generous image section, commissioned texts by Moritz Scheper and manuel arturo abreu, as well as a conversation on the artistic practice of Kanu between Martine Syms, Klein, and the artist.

Authors: manuel arturo abreu, Klein, Martine Syms, Moritz Scheper 
Publisher: Motto Books, Neuer Essener Kunstverein
Design: jmmp.eu (Julian Mader, Max Prediger)

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“Things can be freer and reach higher when they conceal themselves.”–Rita Ackermann

Rita Ackermann was born in Budapest in 1968 and today lives and works in New York. Arriving in America from Hungary in the early 1990s, she is immediately faced with a major challenge: to be able to survive in a foreign country as a young artist, she must be able to integrate the aesthetics of her cultural background together with what the new country offers her in her artistic practice. Her first drawings and paintings made between 1993 and 1996 show adolescent female figures multiplied within the composition and engaged in various self-destructive activities, expressed to the public through understandable and direct language. About twenty years later Ackermann abandons the figure and develops the series of works he entitles Mama, a set of compositions in which lines and gestures, figures and motifs rise to the surface of the canvas to then dissolve and reappear elsewhere. On the occasion of the exhibition at MASI Lugano, in 2022 Ackermann begins a new series of paintings entitled War Drawings, where oil, grease pencil and acrylic are heavily worked on rough linen canvas. In these works, the figures get lost and the lines are scraped away to reveal fragmented compositions.

Published on the occasion of the artist’s solo exhibition at the MASI in Lugano, entitled Hidden, this book contains reproductions of all the works in the exhibition and others selected personally by the artist.

Text by Pamela Kort, a conversation between Rita Ackermann and Donatien Grau.

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“Healing The Museum” is a mid-career monograph looking at Grace Ndiritu’s diverse practice over the last twenty years, which encompasses performance, film, shamanism, social actions, painting, publications, textile work, and collection research. The large selection of artworks included in the publication are in a dialogue with each other, further enriched by in-depth conversations with Brook Andrew, Gareth Bell-Jones, and Philippe Van Cauteren, and written contributions from Ifeanyi Awachie, Ann Hoste, and Hammad Nasar. The monograph’s publication coincides with the eponymous exhibition at S.M.A.K.–Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent.

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Le Livre Art Publishing is proud to announce the upcoming release of Julio Le Parc, the most comprehensive monograph to date on revered Argentinian artist Julio Le Parc. Following Le Parc’s prolific and visionary body of work, this extensive 492 page volume takes a deeper look into the intellectual and creative process of the artist.

Featuring a critical anthology dating back to 1967, an opening essay by Jean de Loisy, an entire section dedicated to Julio Le Parc’s writings and over 600 color plates, this monograph takes us on a journey through the innovative and ground-breaking work of the artist, thus surveying the pivotal « Before Paris » era before diving into the Surfaces and Color Surfaces periods, and continuing its exploration with Contortions, Light, Installations, Games, Alchemies, and Le Parc’s Virtual Museum.

An in-depth photo-biography of the artist further deepens our understanding of Le Parc’s portrayal, along with an anthology of texts by Mario Benedetti, Alberto Biasi, Jorge Romero Brest, Jean Clay, Gérard Fromanger, Julián Gállego, François Morellet, Pablo Neruda, Jean-Louis Pradel, Paco Rabanne, Pierre Restany, and Julio Le Parc.

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When Eye Touches Cloud is the first monograph dedicated to the manifold oeuvre of Romanian artist Constantin Flondor (born 1936, in Czernowitz), the leading protagonist of the art groups 111, Sigma and Prolog. This richly illustrated publication takes a closer look on the influential body of work he had produced in painting, kinetic & Op art, land art, action, experimental film & photography from the 1960s until today. It surveys the various steps of his practice: from the lyricism of the first pictorial constructs to the optical and kinetic art of the Group 111, from the study of form and land art characteristic of the Sigma Group, defined as the effort to connect within a single equation visual research and experiment, to the Prolog Group’s spirit of communion and conviviality.

The book offers a comprehensive overview of the principles that shape Constantin Flondor’s art, of reflecting and theorising starting from the inventory of terms, themes, and concepts that have guided him as an artist over seventy years of uninterrupted work and of restoring them to the international context of art through the contributions of invited authors, Dieter Roelstraete & Abigail Winograd, Rainer Fuchs, and Katarzyna Cytlak. Besides the commissioned essays, the book includes a selection from the artist writings and several archival materials which enlarge our view on artist’s singular mode of thinking.

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P+4 Publications is an independent publishing programme dedicated to the promotion of Romanian contemporary art, photography and architecture, exploring the book medium as a point of encounter between theoretical research, graphic design experiment and artists’ ideas and subjects present in their practice. Presently, the programme brings together the Artist Book Series and the Architecture Book Series, supported between 2013–2021 by the PEPLUSPATRU Association, and Parkour and Exhibition-Dossier series, developed by the Institute of the Present since 2017. Starting from 2021, P+4 Publications is coordinated by the Institute of the Present.

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This book is the first essay in French devoted to David Hammons, a major artist on the international scene.

On a winter’s day in 1983, David Hammons set up shop in the street to sell snowballs of various sizes. He set them up in rows according to their size and spent the day playing the role of a friendly salesman. He places this event – which he later calls Bliz-aard Ball Sale – in a body of work that, from the late 1960s to the present, uses a lexicon of discrete actions and materials considered typically “black” to construct a critique of the nature of the artwork, the art world and racism in the United States. 

Although Bliz-aard Ball Sale is often mentioned and the work’s reputation is increasingly influential, it has long been known only through meagre descriptions and a few photographs. In this fascinating study, Elena Filipovic shares the vast history of this ephemeral work, which she has gathered through oral testimonies, the discovery of images and rarely shown documents, giving us some insights into an essential artist who has made an art of making himself elusive. 

This book is the first essay in French devoted to this major artist of the international scene. 

Since 2014, Elena Filipovic has been the director and curator of the Kunsthalle Basel, where she has organised more than fifty exhibitions. She was curator of WIELS (Brussels) and co-curator with Adam Szymczyk of the fifth edition of the Berlin Biennale in 2008. She has published texts in numerous exhibition catalogues and journals and edited several collections, the most recent of which are The Artist as Curator: An Anthology (Milan, Mousse Publications, 2017) and Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Specific Objects Without Specific Form (London, König Books, 2017). She is also the author of The Apparently Marginal Activities of Marcel Duchamp (Cambridge, MIT Press, 2016). 

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Texts by: Emi Fontana, Pier Luigi Tazzi, Angelika Stepken and Ketty La Rocca.

This book is the first international monograph on Ketty La Rocca’s works and writings.

Initially, inspired by the experimental visual poetry of the mid-sixties, Ketty La Rocca critically investigated questions of communication in the age of mass media. She soon began addressing herself in her work as both an artist and a woman in a desire to find “another” language to express difference and the non-identical. She worked with collage, photography, video, text, drawing, and performance to develop a language of gestures and appropriated imagery of disempowerment. But her work was only granted the short time span of a decade’s production, during which she underwent a rapid artistic development with enormous energy and intelligence.

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