Kader Attia: Transformations. Ellen Blumenstein (Ed.). Spector Books.

The manifold entanglements of African and Western culture are a central motif in the oeuvre of the Algerian-French artist Kader Attia. The influence of traditional African architecture on European modernism forms the background for his voluminous spatial installations, videos and photographs, as much as the re-appropriation of North and South American black music within African Jazz and Pop of the 1960s up to the 1980s. His work manifests the productivity of dissonance: Where African masks, stuffed animals, scientific instruments, and historical artifacts seemingly have nothing in common, the artist unearths connections between Europe’s handling of its own colonial history, current migration politics, and the urbanistic realities of its metropolises of today. Based on Kader Attia’s solo show “Repair. 5 Acts” at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, this publication focuses on works from the years 2008–2013 and places them in a broader art historical concept.

/

Die vielfältigen Verschränkungen afrikanischer und westlicher Kultur sind ein zentrales Motiv im Oeuvre des algerisch- französischen Künstlers Kader Attia: der Einfluss traditioneller afrikanischer Architektur auf die europäische Moderne bilden ebenso den Hintergrund für seine raumgreifenden Installationen, Videos und Fotografien, wie die Wiederaneignung nord-, bzw. südamerikanischer schwarzer Musik im afrikanischen Jazz und Pop der 1960er bis 80er Jahre. In seinem Werk zeigt sich die Produktivität der Dissonanz: wo afrikanische Masken, ausgestopfte Tiere, naturwissenschaftliche Instrumente, historische Artefakte scheinbar nichts miteinander zu tun haben, stellt der Künstler Verbindungen zwischen dem europäischen Umgang mit der eigenen Kolonialgeschichte, der aktuellen Migrationspolitik und städtebauliche Realitäten in den Metrololen von heute her. Ausgehend von Kader Attias Einzel- ausstellung „Reparatur. 5 Akte“ in den KW Institute for Contemporary Art fokussiert diese Publikation auf Werke aus den Jahren 2008 – 2013 und stellt sie in einen breiteren kunsthistorischen Kontext.

224 pp. German/English
Design / Gestaltung: Studio Quentin Walesch
Herausgeber: Ellen Blumenstein, KW Institute for Contemporary Art
Leipzig 2014
ISBN: 978-3-944669-23-6

€34.00

buy it

Isabell Heimerdinger @ Motto Berlin. 15.08.2014
from 7pm

GIORGIO (INSIDE) HANA IKEBANA (OUTSIDE)
Published on the occasion of two newly released short films by Isabell Heimerdinger
printed offset and staple bound in an edition of 300
Motto Books
ISBN 978-2-940524-23-5

Guest Room – Natalie Beall 2013
book design by Pierre le Hors
printed and bound by Conveyor in New Jersey, USA
black and white digital prints
perfect bound softcover with dustjacket
hand-numbered edition of 100
all images sourced from the Library of Congress

€28.00

buy it

Culturefield. Ryan Gander. Koenig Books London.

Ryan Gander’s work ranges across a dizzying spectrum of forms and ideas.

His meticulously researched projects – which have included such diverse conceptual gestures as an invented word, a chess set, a television script, and a children’s book – engage familiar historical narratives and cultural paradigms only to unravel their structures and assumptions, presenting elusive scenarios that abound with interpretive potential.

Published to coincide with the exhibition Ryan Gander: Make every show like it’s your last at Manchester Art Gallery, 3 July – 14 September 2014

€48.00

buy it

Relief #1 / Class

This publication originally started as a discussion between artists, the preconceived idea was that the end product would be an exhibition. The proposal quickly turned into a document that outgrew the requirements for an exhibition format and became itself a display on paper. Printed publishing also has a slow steady pace at which objects are distributed, displayed and consumed and this seems to suit the general scope and concept of this project. The project will attempt to address the discourse of display in relation to contemporary practice, a discourse that has intensified from both sides of creative production and creative organisation over the last decade. This discourse has not as yet had a consistent printed platform that can provide a more frequent and interconnected place to exhibit. The creation of Relief is to establish somewhere for these displays to happen.

Issue #1 contributors :
Florian Auer, Hayley Dixon, Damian Griffiths, Hedwig Houben, Jonathan Miles, Fay Nicolson, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Hannah Sawtell, Heidi Kawai Smith, Heidi Kawai Smith

Paul Graham-Does Yellow Run Forever? Mack Books, 2014

Paul Graham’s Does Yellow Run Forever? comprises a series of photographs touching upon the ephemeral question of what we seek and value in life – love, wealth, beauty, clear-eyed reality or an inner dream world?

The work weaves in and out of three groups of images: photographs of rainbows from Western Ireland, a sleeping dreamer, and gold stores in the United States. The imagery leads us from reality to dream and illusion, between fact and spectral phenomena, each entwined one within the other.

Does Yellow Run Forever? refuses to reduce the world to a knowable schema, but instead embraces the puzzle – that there are no singular meanings, direct answers, or gold waiting at the end of the rainbow. Yet, there are startling visions in the everyday, be they ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’, that there are dreams worth dreaming, magical scenes to be seen, and true moments of wonder to be found as we shiver the mirror of life.

96 pages
31 colour plates
13.5 cm x 19 cm
Embossed hardcover
ISBN 9781910164068

€35.00

buy it

FLANEUR #3: RUE BERNARD, MONTREAL. Ricarda Messner, Fabian Saul (Eds).  Summer 2014

“Flaneur presents one street per issue.  The magazine embraces the street’s complexity  its layers and fragmented nature with a literary approach. It creates a meaningful correlation between places, stories, people and objects that aren’t necessarily related.”

€15.00
buy it

Motto is opening a temporary bookshop at torna between 2nd – 31st of August. For the whole month of August you can find a great selection of Motto books. Only on this Saturday all books will be on %10 sale. Don’t miss it!

On the day of the opening we are hosting a talk by the Istanbul collective Bandrolsüz. They will be reviewing three new books by three Turkish photographers. Ali Taptık will present Seza Bali’s ‘One Man Show’; Selim Süme will present Halil Koyutürk’s new book ‘I am playing ping pong now’ and Sinem Dişli will present Atalay Yeni’s ‘Pulse/Module’ .

We look forward to seeing you on Saturday 2nd between 16.00 – 20.00. Bandrolsüz talks will start at 17.00

http://www.tornaistanbul.com/now.html
https://www.facebook.com/events/741312242596011/

Bernadette Corporation: 2000 Wasted Years

BERNADETTE CORPORATION. 2000 Wasted Years. Ed. by Bernadette Corporation with Jim Fletcher, Richard Birkett & Stefan Kalmár. Contrib. by Caroline Busta, Jim Fletcher, Tom Holert & Josef Strau.

Bernadette Corporation: 2000 Wasted Years” is the first monograph on the work of Bernadette Corporation, the New York-based collective founded in the early 90s. The book extends from their retrospective exhibition Bernadette Corporation: 2000 Wasted Years held at Artists Space in 2012, constituting a further site to reframe BC’s activities and identity of the past 20 years. Bernadette Corporation: 2000 Wasted Years is structured chronologically, loosely following the year-by-year timeline of the group’s history that also formed the backbone of their Artists Space exhibition. The publication gathers a vast array of visual and textual material. It includes the rich image grammar and styling of BC’s operations within the realm of fashion; interventions into the magazine culture of the ’90s, as well as BC’s own short-lived periodical Made in USA; the fragmented output of Pedestrian Cinema during the group’s Berlin years; and the fusion of poetics, branding and meta-commentary within their gallery shows of the 2000s

Author: Bernadette Corporation (Eds)
Publisher: Koenig Books London
Language: English
Pages: 400
Binding: Softcover

€58.00

buy it

folio & Sleeperhold Publications @ Motto Berlin.25.07.2014.

Please join us for the Berlin launch of folio issue two and interim project ‘Image / Object’ by artist Ella McCartney.

Issue two is guest edited by Antwerp based Ward Heirwegh and features artists Phil Baber, Kit Craig, Zoe Giabouldaki and Melike Kara. The issue is constructed around Samuel Beckett’s short play ‘Come and Go’ and includes an A2 insert poster by either Kit Craig or Melike Kara. Twenty limited edition copies contain a specially commissioned object by Kit Craig and the two artists’ posters.

Guest-editor Ward Heirwegh will also be showing publications from his experimental publication platform Sleeperhold Publications.

London based artist Ella McCartney’s ‘Image / Object’ project moves between the online space of folio’s website and the printed object, available to see at the launch.

Friday 25 July, 19.00 start

Motto Berlin
Skalitzer Strasse 68
im Hinterhof
10997 Berlin